
y^^^ic 



With the Compliments of the Committee on 

The National Centennial Commemoration. 




ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY 



INTRODUCTION AND ADOPTION 



RESOLUTIONS RESPECTING INDEPENDENCY" 



lomm'itW oTvTHE NATIONAL CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 



PROCEEDINGS 



ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY 

OK THE 

INTRODUCTION AND ADOPTION 

OF THE 

"RESOLUTIONS RESPECTING INDEPENDENCY." 

HELD IN PHILADELPHIA 

D.N THE 

Evening of June 7, 1876, 

AT THE 

PENNSYLVANIA ACADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS, 

AND ON 

July I, 1876, 

AT THi; 

HALL OF INDEPENDENCE. 




PH ILADELPH I A: 

PRINTED FOR THE COMMITTEE. 

MDCCCLXXVI. 



I 



xqs 



PHILADELPHIA: 

COLLINS. PRINTER. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



In the iiiouth of March, 1870, by direction of the President 
of the United States C entg.nJual_Co mniissi on, an Histo rical 
^ Department was formed, designed to commemorate and illus- 
trate the pre-revolutionary history of the country, by bringing 
together porti'aits of Colonial worthies, documents of historical 
interest, and personal memorials of the past ; aud Colonel 
Frank M. Etting was i-equested to accept the position of Chief. 
His fitness for promoting and carrying out this object was 
manifest from his successful services iu the restoration of 
Independence Hall and the formation of a National Museum. 
A committee was selected with the approval of the Director- 
General, and efforts were at once made to gather together, in 
the brief time afforded, articles desirable for exhibition iu the 
department ; appropriate space having been allotted in the Art 
Building for the purpose. Subsequently, it was found neces- 
sary, owing to the large influx of foreign pictures, to cancel 
the allotment of space to the Historical Department; and 
thus, at the eleventh hour, the committee found the depart- 
ment at an end, and themselves with a valuable collection on 
their hands, but without a place to exhibit it. In this dilemma, 
application was made to the President and Board of Directors 
of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, who at once 
liberally offered a pox'tion of their fire-proof building for the 
purpose ; and the committee, consisting of Messrs. Frank M. 
Etting, James L. Claghorn, Francis S. Hoffman, J. Sergeant 
1 



2 l> R E F A T R Y N T E . 

Price, Frederick J). 8toiie, Charles Henry Hart, Mrs. Amie 
Hopkiuson Foggo, Mrs. Katharine Johnstone Wharton, and 
Mrs. Mary Johnson Brown Chew, organized the historical 
"National Centennial Commemoration." 

The tin)e selected for the opening of the exhibition at the 
Academy of the Fine Arts was the 7th of June, the one hun- 
dredth anniversary of the day on which Richard Henry Lee 
offered in Congress the Resolution for Independence. C)n the 
evening of that daj- the invited guests, composed of the most 
eminent of Philadelphia's citizens, and of representatives from 
the mother country and from each of the thirteen original 
States, assembled in the lecture room of the Academy ; when, 
after a brief introduction by the Chairman of the committee, 
a commemorative historical address was delivered by the Hon. 
William Wirt Henry, of Virginia. At the conclusion of the 
address, the exhibition was declared by the Chairman as for- 
mally opened, and the guests proceeded to view the collection, 
which occupies the northwest gallery of the building, on the 
second floor. 

A large portion of the exhibition consists of paintings, and 
there is also an interesting collection of relics of historical 
personages. The western end of the room is occupied by 
paintings by American artists, designed to illustrate the his- 
tory of art in America. It includes works by West, Pratt, 
Smibert, Copley, Hesselius, Charles Willson Peale, James 
Peale, Sharpless, Stuart, St. Memiu, Malbone, Sully, Allstou, 
Theus, Earle, and Pine. 

The northern side of the hall is occupied by exhibits de- 
signed to illustrate the early history of the settlements at 
Plymouth and Salem, made respectively by the Pilgrim Asso- 
ciation of Plymouth, and the Essex Institute of Salem. In 
the Plymouth collection are exhibited a number of interest- 
ing relics, including a table and platter which belonged to 
Miles Standish; a model of the vessel Mayflower; a portrait 



P R E F A T II Y N T E . 6 

of Paul Revere; the barrel of the gun whicli is said to Lave 
killed King Philip ; a chair over 200 years old, which belonged 
to Governor Treat, of Connecticut ; and a Bible which belonged 
to John Alden, who came over in the Mayflower. 

The Salem collection embraces portraits of John Endicott 
and Simon Bradstrcet, the first and last Governor of the 
Colony under the first charter; of Sir Richard Saltonstall, one 
of the patentees of Massaciiusetts; John Leverett, Governor 
of Massachusetts; Timotliy Pickering, and others, while above 
them are draped the flags of the Colony. In the cases of the 
Essex Institute are exhibited a number of very interesting 
documents and memorials, including the Royal charter, under 
the great seal of England; manuscript record of the witcli- 
craft trials, in the liand writing of Rev. Samuel Parris; the 
Christening robe of Governor Bradstreet, W'orn in 1588, and 
many others of value. 

In the northeastern corner of the room is the collection 
made to illustrate the career of "Washington, and which in- 
cludes a number of original portraits by Stuart, Peale, Pine, 
and other well-known artists. There are also scenes of Mount 
Vernon, and a picture of the room in which "Washington died. 
The case contains the miniature of Washington worn by Mrs. 
"\\^ashiugton after his death; the profile miniature on copper 
by the Countess de Brehan ; the beautiful miniature by James 
Peale belonging to the Artillery Corps "Washington Grays, and 
a number of others. Also, his spectacles, surveying instru- 
ment, silver cuj^ and salver, portions of the dinner china which 
he used, and, possibly most interesting of all, a letter from his 
mother, Mary Washington, written to her brother in 1759, in 
which she speaks of " George" having left the arm}-. There 
are but two letters of Mary Washington known to be in ex- 
istence, and this the only one mentioning " George." 

Benjamin Franklin is represented by an extremely interest- 
ing collection, embracing a number of well-known portraits. 



4 1' R E F A T R Y N T E . 

the bust by Ceracchi, aiui a painting representing liini wben 
he appeared as the representative of the Colonies at the Court 
of Louis XVI. In the case is tlie original commission he 
received from Congress to represent the Colonies in France, 
together with his " Letter of Instructions," each signed by 
Henry Laurens, President, and attested by Charles Thomson, 
Secretary ; also his Air-Pump and Insulating-stool, given by 
him to Francis Hopkinson ; and many other personal memo- 
rials. 

Maryland and Virginia are represented by a number of por- 
traits of persons who bore an important part in their early 
history. Among these are portraits of Sir Wa,lter Raleigh, 
Pocahontas, Lord Baltimore, Governor Spottiswoode, and Pat- 
rick Henry. Near by are cases containing a number of curious 
relics, including the lines written just before his execution by 
Sir Walter Raleigh, in his own handwriting, and interesting 
letters from, among others, William Peun, George Fox, Sir 
Jeffrey Amherst, Rev. George Whitefield, Generals Braddock 
and Wolfe, Baron de Kalb, General Burgoyne, Lord Rawdon, 
and Admiral Howe. 

In another case are exhibited the Strong Box of Robert 
Morris, with his original appointment as Superintendent of 
Finance; the silver shoe-buckles worn by Sam. Adams when 
he signed the Declaration of Independence ; the Desk upon 
which Jefferson wrote the original draft of the Declaration ; 
the wine-glasses presented to Hancock by Jolm Wilkes, bear- 
ing the motto "Success to Wilkes and Liberty;" the specta- 
cles of Wni. Ellery ; the watch of Charles Carroll; a miniature 
of John !N^ixon, who read and pi'oclaimed the Declaration of 
Independence publicly to the people for the first time Juh' 8th, 
1770, from the Observatorj- in the State House yard; the com- 
mission of Benedict Arnold; the MS. parole of Major Andrf? 
when a prisoner at Lancaster, Pa., February 23d, 1776, 
together with other souvenirs of tliis unfortunate and inte- 



P K K F A T O R y N T K . 5 

resting officer, and of many other characters of the Eevolu- 
tion ; while, in still another case, are brought together cos- 
tumes of the last century, household china and glass of the 
same period, and the comnuiiiion service presented to Christ 
Protestant Episcopal Church, riiiladelphia, l>v Queen Anne. 

The committee for the historical "K'ational Centennial 
Commemoi'ation," having charged itself with the duty of dis- 
tinctly marking the historical eijochs leading up to that which 
the United States Centennial Commission was formed to cele- 
brate, and having commemorated the 7th of June, prepared to 
commemorate dul}- the 2d of July, the day on which was 
passed the Resolution for Independence, the reasons for which 
were adopted two days later. As early as the 25th of October, 
1875, the Committee on the Restoration of Independence Hall 
had addressed to the most prominent American authors and 
historical students the following: invitation. 



To 



'INDEPENDENCE HALT. 

Phii.adelphia. October 25, 1875. 



Sir : The Committee on the Restoration of Intlepenclence Hall have resolved 
to invite the presence of American Historians, Biographers, and Literati at 
that place on the second day of July, 1876. They de.sire that a Biographical 
sketch of every individual, whose memory is associated with this Building 
during the early days of the Republic, maybe prepared and deposited on that 
day among the Archives of the National Museum. 

You are respectfully requested to be present at Independence Hall on 
the day above mentioned, and to bring with you a sketch of the life of 



or in case of a preference for another subject, to communicate the fact. It is 
desired that these sketches should not exceed two pages of foolscap. 
With great respect, 

FRANK M. ETTING, 

Chairmnv of the Committee " 



6 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



It was thought appropriate for the two committees to unite 
their efforts, and accordingly it was decided that on the ad- 
journment of the meeting in Independence Hall, there should 
be commemorative exercises in the State House yard; and a 
programme was ari'anged, and accomplished speakers invited 
to make addresses. These proceedings commemorative of the 
2d of Jul}' form the second part of this publication, which is 
designed as a memorial of the Centennial anniversary of the 
introduction and passage of "Certain Resolutions respecting 
Independency." 

CHARLES HENRY HART. 
FREDERICK D. STONE, 

Committee on Publication. 
Philadelphia. October. 187G. 



-^^i-.-T^-'^is'i 







THE 



4t«t'«w«' to,,,,, 




.Anniversary of June yth, lyjd. 



PROCEEDINGS 



PENNSYLVANIA ACADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS, JUNE 7, 1S76. 



1776. 



JUNE 7. 



1876. 



REMARKS OF COL. ETTING. 



Ladies and Gentlemen : — 

The collection of portraits and memorials now about to be 
opened to the public is designed to supplement the National 
Museum in Independence Hall. The Committee on the Re- 
storation of Independence Hall and the National Museum 
Board, after steadily pursuing our purpose for four years, find 
ourselves cramped for room in the State House. More space 
has been promised, but cannot, notwithstanding earnest efforts 
to that eifect, be had at present. Failing to secure appropriate 
galleries at the Centennial Exposition — though Memorial Hall 
had been erected by the State of Pennsylvania for this specific 
purpose — the Historical Committee applied to the President 
of this noble Academy, who promptly and cordially gave up 
adequate apartments. Causes, not now to be detailed, have 
induced the withdrawal of some of the States from partici- 
pancy in our commemorative work, but the Pilgrim Hall 
Association and the Essex Institute, of Massachusetts, aided 
by the individual efforts of the ladies of Baltimore and of 
Philadelphia, enable us to otter you a highly interesting and 
instructive collection. The intent of the Committee, as you 
are aware, is to trace the history of the country for nearly 
two hundred years from its first settlement in 1607, and while 
we revive every event in the progressive advance of ti'ue 
liberty, we shall be enabled to realize the vitality of the men — 



10 THENATIONAL 

the Founders of the country — in their persons, and thus keep 
in view as exemplars the principles for which they struggled. 

Among the events incumbent upon us to commemorate in 
this Centennial season, is that which achieves its one hun- 
dredth anniversary this day — June 7, 1876. 

The official record kept by Charles Thomson, and published 
at the time that tried men's souls, is meagre in the extreme 
— thus, " certain resolutions respecting independency being 
moved and seconded," etc. But I have before me an auto- 
graphic tracing of these resolutions; it is in the handwriting 
of Richard Henry Lee ; it reads — 

'■'■Resolved, That these United Colonies arc, and of right ought 
to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved 
from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political 
connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, 
and ought to be, totally dissolved." 

Thus was taken the first step in the JSTational Councils 
towards the birth of the nation. While we leave each suc- 
cessive one to be appropriately marked, we seem called ujDon 
to look at the promptings of tliis, the initiative. We find it 
was ordered to be taken by the Colony of Virginia, in Conven- 
tion, and that, among the members of that Convention, one 
name stands out in bold relief — Patrick Henry. Who, then, 
so appropriate to recount to you this evening the events of 
our Centennial as his grandson, a gentleman who, by birth- 
right, preserves the private papers of Mr. Henry, while he 
brings to bear upon the investigation, not only all the energy 
prompted by filial duty, but the advantages of high legal 
attainments and experience. He is the namesake (and at the 
request of Mr. Wirt) of Mr. Henry's great biographer. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have the pleasure of presenting to 
you, as the orator of the evening Mr. William Wirt Henky, 
of Virginia. 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 11 



ADDRESS OF MR. HENRY. 

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Committee, and Fellow- 
Citizens: 
Permit me to congratulate you of the Committee on the 
happy conception and admirable realization of the design 
to aid in commemorating the birth of the nation, by illus- 
trations of its early history. To be able to look on the 
noble faces of the great founders of our republic, preserved 
by brush and chisel in the hand of genius ; to handle the 
familiar articles which they used, and which a pious care has 
preserved as Lares of the household, relics more precious than 
the heir-looms of princes, does indeed bring us face to face 
with the illustrious dead, and enables us to see, and to touch, 
as it were, the honored men whose names we have been taught 
to revere from childhood, the fruits of whose arduous and 
perilous labors we have inherited, and which it becomes us to 
transmit to our posterity, wasted by no prodigal hand. And 
while we gaze on the features of those who have shed such 
lustre upon our Continent and upon our race, how naturally 
are we reminded of the noble princiijles which actuated their 
conduct, and made them of the great men of the world — prin- 
ciples which they laid deep as tlie foundations upon which 
they built a temple for the goddess of Liberty, and which they 
commended to our constant, vigilant care, in those words of 
solemn warning, verified in the experience of so many nations: 
" No free government or tlie blessing of liberty can be pre- 
served to any peojile, but b}' a firm adherence to justice, mode- 
ration, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent 
recurrence to fundamental principles." Let us honor our 
fathers, that the days of our freedom may be long in the land 
which the Lord our God hath given us. The day selected for 
the opening of this exhibition is peculiarly appropriate, as it 



12 THENATIONAl, 

marks the time when independence was moved in the Con- 
gress of tlie Colonies, the final throe in the birth of the 
ISTation ; and I thank you for the honor done me in asking 
that I represent on this occasion the State at whose command 
the motion was made. If in doing so I should speak mostly 
of Virginia, it will not be from any intention of doing injus- 
tice to the other Colonies — each of whom has a bright record 
in the struggle for independence, but because the occasion 
requires me to speak more particularly of her. 

The action of Virginia, culminating in her motion on the 
7th of June, 1776, needs no justification at m}' bands to-day. 
Mankind have vied in her praises, and Great Britain herself 
has learned to honor her; yea, if Ave are permitted to judge of 
the councils of the Judge of all the earth, b}' tlie blessings 
which have descended, heaven itself has set its seal of appro- 
bation to her acts. 

It is proper, however, as we stand here to-day to commemo- 
rate her motion, to glance, rapidly it must be, at the events 
which preceded and prompted it. When we look at the first 
settlements of Europeans on this continent in the seventeenth 
century, we find that thej' were induced by various motives. 
Led by the love of adventure, of wealth, or of glory, or driven 
by the lash of persecution, English, Scotch, Irish, Dutch, 
Swedish, and French contributed to tlie planting of a new 
nation on the virgin soil of America, which, assimilating its 
different elements, put forth a new and pecidiar growth, des- 
tined far to outstrip the stocks from whence it sprang. But, 
by whatever motives impelled, and liowever diverse in their 
opinions, their prejudices or their manners, whether Puritans 
in New England, or Episcopalians in Virginia, Quakers in 
Pennsylvania, or Catholics in Maryland, all united in a com- 
mon love of liberty, and a determination to try the experiment 
of self-government on a more liberal plan than had ever been 
attempted before. The elective franchise, the General Assem- 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 13 

bly, the trial by jury, and the habeas corpus were common 
possessions ; and possessed of these great characteristics and 
safeguards of liberty, far removed from the power of the 
mother country, under liberal charters, and stimulated by that 
spirit of personal iudependeuce peculiar to emigrants to a new 
and savage land, the Colonics soon developed into communi- 
ties of entei'i^rise, of wealth, and of singular attachment to 
free institutions ; communities in which were read the works 
of John Milton, John Locke, and Algernon Sydney, and 
whose citizens held with them that freedom is the native 
right of man. 

It was not long, however, before the wealth of the Colonies 
attracted the cupidity of the mother couiitrj', and one of 
the most memorable of the acts of that Parliament which 
restored royalty to the British throne, was the passage of a 
navigation law which gave a monopoly of their commerce 
to British merchants. This act, frequently amended only to 
be made more odious, was submitted to by the Colonies as an 
exercise of the power of Great Britain to regulate trade, and 
not until 1760, when it was determined to break up the con- 
stant evasion of the detested law by general warrants, author- 
izing search and apprehension at tlie discretion of the officers 
holding them, did the dangerous power exercised by the mo- 
ther country become the subject of discussion and alarm. In 
resisting the issuing of these " Writs of Assistance," so repug- 
nant to the British constitution, James Otis, of Massachusetts, 
the most brilliant of her orators, electrified his Colony. In 
his audience there sat a young man, his ecpial in genius if not 
in oratory, whose soul was filled with delight at the crreat 
doctrines of natural and of English freedom which the orator 
proclaimed ; and who, at once throwing his whole soul into 
the struggle for constitutional liberty, himself with matchless 
eloquence stood forth afterwards a most distinguished cham- 
pion of American rights. Happy Massachusetts I Happy 



14 THENATIONAL 

America I The electric spark emitted by the genius of James 
Otis kindled the genius of John Adams. 

But the rai^acity of Great Britain did not stoji at laws by 
which her merchants and ship-owners might grow ricli at 
the expense of her Colonies. Her treasury, exhausted by 
war, must needs be replenished, and the taxation of America 
was determined on. Liberal charters stood in the way, and 
these it was planned to recall, and to substitute in their 
stead one uniform, arbitrary system of government. To im- 
pose a direct tax at first was deemed too bold a measure, and 
the expedient was devised of a stamp act, which executing 
itself, and bearing but lightly in its collection, it was fondly 
hoped would arouse no opposition to its enforcement. On the 
9th of March, 1764, therefore, George Grenville, Chancellor of 
the Exchequer, in unfolding the budget in Parliament gave 
notice that at the next session a bill would be introduced 
imposing stamp duties in America. The intelligence of this 
intention produced the jirofoundest sensation throughout tlio 
Colonies. The right to say through their own representatives 
what taxes they should bear, was one fundamental to the 
British constitution, and secured to them- by their charters, 
and they could not admit that the British Parliament repre- 
sented them who had no voice in the selection of its members, 
and who had their own Assemblies vested with the power of 
taxation. The voice of Boston was first heard in her instruc- 
tions to her delegates in the Colonial Assembly, prepai-ed by 
Samuel Adams, aptly styled the Palinurus of the Revolution. 
These were followed by the uol)lo argument of James Otis, in 
his jiamphlet entitled "The Rights of the British Colonies 
Asserted and Proved." The alarm sounded in Massachusetts 
was taken up in the otheu Colonies, and petitions and remon- 
strances against the proposed act wore forwarded b}- the 
Assemblies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, i!^ew York, Penn- 
sylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia. Tlieir remonstrances 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 15 

proved vaiu. But few voices opposed the act on its passage 
ill the House of Comuions — none in the House of Lords — and 
on the 22d of Marcli, 1765, the King, hereft of his reason, 
gave his assent, through a commission. Had Parliament as 
well as the King heen afflicted with insanity, no grcatei- mis- 
take could have been committed. The news of the passage of 
the act produced the most widespread consternation in the 
Colonies. Their views of their rights were unchanged, but it 
was one thing to remonstrate against a proposed act, and 
quite another to resist a law. The first was the right of eveiy 
British subject ; the last was rebellion. A sullen submission 
was all that could be expected — was all that could be yielded — 
but submission was deemed inevitable in every quarter. 

The time was short when the dreaded law must take eftcct, 
and all they contended for seemed about to be lost, :ind if once 
lost, lost forever ; for the principle once yielded could never 
be reclaimed. Despondency spread her black wings over the 
land, brooding despair, and the sorrows of death compassed 
the patriot cause. 

" Fear at its heart, as at a cup, 
Its life-blood seemed to sip." 

Even the eloquent tongue of Otis, the great champion of 
American liberty, faltered ; and admitting Britain's right of 
taxation, he deplored resistance, and thus giive up the great 
issue. All the hope he had was that a united, loyal petition 
might move the compassion of that Sovereign whose ear had 
been found deaf to the demands of justice. 

But the Divinity that shapes our ends had ordered other- 
wise. God had not left Israel without a prophet. Suddenly 
Virginia was heard denouncing the law as " yoid and destruc- 
tive to British and American liberty ;" speaking now, for 
the first time, through one whose trumpet tones echoed and 
re-echoed throughout America, where 

" Every mountain now batli tuund a tongue ;" 



16 TIIENATIONAL 

arousiiio; the patriot cause from its death-like torpor, and re- 
verberating in the very palace of the British King, warning 
him that an outraged people liad once dragged a tyrant from 
that palace to the bloody block. It was the voice of her 

" Henry, the forost-born nemosthenes, 
Whose thunder shook the Philip of the seas." 

Had it sounded from heaven in the ears of the desponding 
Colonies, the effect could scarcely have been more sudden or 
more startling. 

The pent-up indignation of America, which, like a black 
cloud overcasting the heavens, seemed slowly approaching the 
horizon to be 

" In the deep bosom of the ocean buried," 

as by an electric flash was suddenly discharged, and poured 
forth such a torrent as overwhelmed all who vainly attempted 
to witlistand its flood. "No taxation without representa- 
tion! resistance to the stamp act!" were suddenly heard on 
every side, and so terrible was the passion of the people, now 
thoroughly aroused and lashed into a tempest, that when the 
time arrived for the commencement of the tax no man in 
America was bold enough to act as the distributor of stamps. 
The British administration itself was overwhelmed, and, bow- 
ing to tlie storm it had raised but could not rule, repealed 
the obnoxious act. But the day-star of the American Revo- 
lution had arisen with healing for the nations in its beams. 
America had felt her own power, and henceforth it was im- 
possible to rivet upon her the manacles forged by her tyrants. 
The ever-memorable action of Virginia was embodied in her 
resolutions passcfl the 30th of May, 1765, in these words: — 

" Resolved, That the first adventurers and settlers of this 
his Majesty's colony and dominion, brought with them and 
transmitted to their posterity and all other his Majesty's sub- 



CENTENNIAT, COMMEMORATION. 17 

jects since inhabiting in this liis Majesty's colon}', all the privi- 
leges, franchises, and immunities that have at any time been 
hold, enjoyed, and possessed hy the people of Great Britain. 

" Resolved, That by two royal charters granted by King 
James I., the colonists aforesaid are declared entitled to all 
the privileges, liberties, and immunities of denizens and 
natnral-liorn subjects, to all intents and purposes, as if they 
had been abiding and born within the realm of England. 

" Resolved, That the taxation of the people by themselves, 
or l)y persons chosen by themselves to represent them, who 
can onl}- know what taxes the people are able to bear, and 
the easiest mode of raising them, and are equally affected by 
such taxes themselves, is the distinguishing characteristic of 
British freedom, and without wliicli the ancient constitution 
cannot subsist. 

" Resolved, That his Majesty's liege people of this most 
ancient Colony have uninterruptedly enjoyed the right of 
being thus governed by their own Assembly in the article of 
their taxes and internal police, and that the same liatli never 
been forfeited or in any other way given up, but hath been 
constantly recognized by the kings and people of Great 
Britain. 

^^ Resolved therefore. That the General Assembly of this 
Colony have the sole right and power to la}' taxes and im- 
positions upon the inhabitants of this Colony, and that every 
attempt to vest such power in any person or persons what- 
soever, other than the General Assembly aforesaid, has a 
manifest tendency to destroy British as well as American 
freedom." 

The author of these resolutions, which rent an empire, left 
a copy in his own handwriting, which I now hold in my 
hand, and, desiring to be remembered by posterity for this 
act, he claims, by the endorsement he made on the paper, that 
by their passage " the great point of resistance to British 
3 



18 THENATIONAL 

taxation was universally established in the Colonics. This 
brought on the war which finally separated the two countries, 
and gave independence to ours." 

I need not detail the subsequent renewal of the eftbrt to 
tax America b^- another mode, culminating in the occupation 
of Boston by Britisli soldiers, and the assembling of the 
Congi'css of 177-i, in Carpenters' Hall ; but I will hurry on 
to the events immediately preceding the day we celebrate. 

The war between the Colonies and Great Britain was waged 
at first in defence of jiolitical rights, but with no thought of 
final separation between the countries, except perhaps by a 
few, wlio, endowed with more of jirophetic ken than their 
fellows, saw the end from the beginning. Certain it is, that 
in all the public papers issued by those who had a right to 
speak for the peoi)le, the idea of separation was careful!}^ dis- 
owned. The Congress of September, 1774, in its address to 
the king, used these words: "Your royal authority over us, 
and our connection with Great Britain, we shall always care- 
fully and zealously endeavor to support and maintain." And 
the Congress of 1775, in its address of the 6th of July, setting 
forth the causes and reasons for taking up arms, said : " Lest 
this declaration sliould disquiet the minds of our friends and 
fellow-subjects in any part of the Empire, we assure them that 
we mean not to dissolve that union which has so long and so 
happily subsisted between us, and which we sincerely wish to 
see restored." This address was penned by Thomas Jcfl:crson, 
and was read anaid thundering huzzas in every market-place, 
fervent prayers in nearly ever}' pulpit, and booming cannon 
in the patriot army. 

As late as the 29th of November, 1775, we find the Conti- 
nental Congress declaring in their letter to the agents of the 
Colonies in England, that " There is nothing more ardently 
desired by North America than a lasting union with Great 
Britain, on terms of just and equal liberty." Nor did the Con- 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 19 

gress alone bear witness to the desire of the Colonies. On the 
9th of J^oveniber, 1775, the Pennsylvania Assembly instructed 
her delegates to resist any move in the direction of independ- 
ence. On the 28 th of !N'oveml)er, the New Jersey Assembly gave 
similar instructions to her delegates. On the 7th of December, 
the Maryland Convention declared that the people of that 
Colony "Never did, nor do, entertain any views or desires of 
independency." On the 14th of December, the New York Pro- 
vincial Congress declared that their people had not withdrawn 
their allegiance, and that their turbulent state did not arise 
" From a desii'e to become independent of the British crown." 
On the 25th of December, the town of Portsmouth, New 
Hampshire, instructed their delegates in the Provincial Con- 
gress to resist the formation of local government, " To show 
that they wx-re not aiming at independency." The North 
Carolina Provincial Congress, in an address which was adopted 
on the 8th of September, 1775, disclaimed in earnest terms the 
design of independence. The other Colonies also gave full 
assurance that independence was not their desire. But tlie 
government of Great Britain was not content, and tlie king 
preferred American independence to the continuance of the 
connection on American principles. In December, 1775, was 
enacted the bill prohibiting all traffic Avith America, and sub- 
stantially declaring war. The eliect of this and other measures 
consequent, was soon manifested in the Colonies, and inde- 
pendence was openly discussed. Left without their regular 
government, they had, early in the war, resorted to temporary 
exjijedients, and thus had become accustomed to the exercise 
of independent powers, though in every instance the taking 
up of government was declared to be temporary, and to end 
when reconciliation was accomj^lished. The spring of 1776 
found a great change in the feeling of the Colonies. All hope 
of reconciliation seemed to have been lost by the great bulk of 
the people, and submission or independence were the only alter- 



20 T 11 E N A T I N A L 

natives left ; but they still hesitated to take the final stej:). The 
Convention of Virginia was fixed to meet tlie 6th of May, 
and the elections of the delegates revealed the state of public 
feeling there. In many, if not most, of the counties, the 
candidates were required to pledge themselves to a final sepa- 
ration from Great Britain. As a specimen of the instructions 
given to their delegates, listen to the following from the 
county of Charlotte — my native county, I am proud to say — 
to Paul Carrington and Thomas Read, her delegates, dated 23d 
April, 177G, and the earliest move for independence of any 
community I have ever met with, which has been clearly estab- 
lished : " Despairing of any redress of our grievances from the 
King and Parliament of Great Britain, and all hopes of a 
reconciliation between her and the United Colonies being now 
at an end, and being conscious that their treatment has been 
such as loyal subjects did not deserve, and to which as freemen 
we are determined not to submit ; by the unanimous approba- 
tion and direction of the whole freeholders, and all the inhabi- 
tants of this county, we advise and instruct you cheerfully to 
concur and give your best assistance in our Convention, to 
])iish to the utmost a war — offensive and defensive — until you 
are certified that such projiosals of peace are made to our 
General Congress as shall by them be judged just and fricndl}-. 
* * * " * And we give it you in charge to use your best 
endeavoi's that the delegates which are sent to the General 
Congress be instructed immediately to cast off the British 
yoke, and to enter into commercial alliances with any nation 
or nations friendly to our cause. And as King George III., of 
Great Britain, has manifested deliberate enmity towards us, 
and, under the character of a parent, Jjersists in behaving as a 
tyrant, that they, in our behalf, renounce allegiance to him 
forever ; and that, taking the God of heaven to be our king, 
and depending on his protection and assistance, they plan out 
that form of government which may the most etfectualiy 



C E N T !•: N N I A 1, C M AI E M K A T I N . 21 

secure to us tlie enjojraeut of our civil and religious rights 
and principles to the latest posterity." 

Brave words from the grand old county of Charlotte ! Well 
worthy to become tlie last resting-place of him who "gave 
the first impulse to the ball of the revolution." Elected by 
such constituents the convention could not be other than a 
noble body. It was looked to by all the Colonies with the 
earnest expectation that the wisdom of its councils might 
resolve their doubts as to the course to be pursued. Richard 
Henry Lee, not knowing that he might be able to leave his 
seat in Congress to attend its sessions, wrote to Patrick Henry 
from Philadelphia on the 20th of April, 1776, to urge that 
the decisive step be taken. Said he : " I invite your attention 
to the most important concerns of our approaching conven- 
tion. Ages yet unborn, and millions existing at present, may 
rue or bless that assembly, on which their happiness or misery 
will so eminently depend. Virginia has hitherto taken the 
lead in gi-eat affairs, and many now look to her with anxious 
expectation, hoping that the spirit, wisdom, and energy of her 
councils will arouse America from the fatal lethargy into 
which feebleness, folly, and interested views of the proprie- 
tary governments, with the aid of Tory machinations, have 
thrown her most unhappily." After arguing the necessity of 
immediately declaring Independence, forming a permanent 
government, and seeking foreign alliances, he adds: "This I 
take to be the time and thing meant by Shakspeare, when he 
says, 'There is a tide in the affairs men, which, taken at the 
flood, leads on to fortune ; that omitted, we are ever after 
bound in shallows.' " 

And, in truth, no nobler band of patriots ever met together 
than assembled in that convention. Its roll contained nearly 
all of the great men of Virginia, at a time when Virginia 
would not suffer in comparison with any State, ancient or 
modern. Listen to the names of some of the most conspic- 



22 THENATIONAL 

uous: Ediuuud Pendleton, Richard Bland, Robert Carter 
Meholas, John Blair, Ednuuid Randolph, William Cabell, 
Henry Tazewell, Benjamin Harrison, Archibald Cary, George 
Wythe, Thomas Xelson, Thomas Jefierson, George Mason, 
Richard Henry Lee, and -Patrick Henry. One name, the 
grandest of all, was missing from its accustomed place on that 
roll, but Virginia had given her AVashington to America, that 
like a saviour he might lead her through the " Valle}' of the 
shadow of death," to glorious victory and peace, and he was 
now at the head of her armies — 

'•Our tower of strengtli, 
Wliicli stood lbui'-s(|uare to all the winds that blew." 

The honor of presiding over the eonvention was conferred 
on Edmund Pendleton. On the 14th of May, the body sat as 
a Committee of the Whole on the state of the Colony, with 
Archibald Cary in the chair. On that daj^ General Thomas 
Xelson, the most popular man in the Colony, of unbounded 
generosit}', fortitude, and patriotism, moved the following 
resolves, wliich had been drawn by Edmund Pendleton : — 

"Forasmuch as all the endeavors of the United Colonies, 
by the most decent representation and petitions to the king 
and parliament of Great Britain, to restore peace and security 
to America under the British government, and a reunion with 
that people upon just and liberal terms, instead of a redress 
of grievances, have produced from an imperious and vindic- 
tive administration increased insult, ojjpressiou, and a vigor- 
ous attempt to ett'ect our total destruction ; by a late act all 
these colonies are declared to be in rebellion, and out of the 
protection of the British crown; our properties subjected to 
confiscation ; our people, when captivated, compelled to join 
in the murder and plunder of their relatives and countrymen, 
and all former rapine and oppression of Americans declared 
legal and just ; fleets and armies are raised, and the aid of 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMOEATION. 23 

foreign troops engaged to assist tliese destructive purposes. 
The King's representative in this Colony hath not only with- 
held all powers of government from operating for our safety, 
Init, having retired on board an armed ship, is carrying on a 
piratical and savage wax against us, tempting our slaves by 
every artifice to resort to him, and training and employing 
them against their masters. In this state of extreme danger 
we have no alternative left but an abject submission to the 
will of these overbearing tyrants, or a total separation from 
the crown and government of Great Britain, uniting and 
exerting the strength of all America for defence, and forming 
alliances with foreign powers for commerce and aid in war. 
Wherefore, appealing to the Searcher of Hearts for the sin- 
cerity of former declarations, expressing our desii-e to preserve 
the connection with that nation, and that we arc driven from 
that inclination b}^ their wicked councils and the eternal laws 
of self-preservation, 

" Resolved unanimously. That the delegates appointed to rep- 
resent this Colony in General Congress be instructed to pro- 
pose to that respectable body to dcclai-e the United Colonies 
free and independent States, al)solved from all allegiance to 
or dependence upon the Crown or Parliament of Great Britain ; 
and that they give the assent of this Colony to such declara- 
tion, and to whatever measures may be thought proper and 
necessary by Congress for forming foreign alliances and a con- 
federation of the colonies at such time and in the manner as 
to them shall seem best. Provided, that the power of forming 
government for, and the regulations of, the internal concerns 
of each Colony be left to the respective Colonial Legislatures. 

'■^Itesolved mianimously^ That a committee be appointed to 
prepare a Declaration of Rights and such a plan of government 
as will be most likely to maintain peace and order in this 
Colony, and to secure substantial and equal liberty to the 
people." 



24 T H E N A TI N A L 

These resolutions were discussed on tliat and the succeeding 
day in Committee of tlic Whole, and on the 15th of May were 
reporteil to the House, according to custom, by Arcliiliald 
Gary, who had presided over the committee, and the record 
shows they were unanimoush^ agreed to by the House, 112 
members being present. 

From an oration delivered Ijy Edmund Randolph at the 
gi'ave of Edmund Pendleton, and from a fragment of a 
hitherto unpublished manuscript history of Virginia by the 
same eminent person, I am enabled to give you a sketch of 
this memoi'able occasion. Says Edmund Randolph: "When 
the disposition of the peojile as exhibited by their rej^resen- 
tatives could not be mistaken, Henry had full indulgence of 
his own i^rivate judgment, and lie concerted with Xelsou 
that he (Nelson) should introduce the question of independ- 
ence, and that Henry should enforce it. ]!felson afiected 
nothing of oratory, except what ardent feelings might inspire, 
and, characteristic of himself, be had no fears of liis own 
witli which to temporize, and supposing that others ought 
to have none, lie passed over the probabilities of foreign aid, 
stepped lightly on the difficulties of procuring military stores 
and the inexperience of officers and soldiers, but pressed a 
declaration of independence, ujion what with him were incon- 
trovei-tible grounds, that we were oppressed, had humbly sup- 
plicated a redress of grievances which had been refused with 
insult; and that to return from battle against the sovereign 
with the cordiality of subjects was absurd. It was expected 
that a declaration of independence would certainly be passed, 
and for obvious reasons Mr. Henry seemed allotted to ci-own 
his political conduct with this supreme stroke. And yet for 
a considerable time he talked of the subject as critical, but 
without committing himself by a pointed avowal in its lavor 
or a i^ointod repudiation of it. He thought that a course 
\vhich put at stake the lives and fortunes of the people should 



CENTENNIAL CO MJI EM ORATION. 25 

ajipear to be their own act, and that he ouglit not to place 
upon the responsibility of his eloquence a revolution of wliich 
the peoj^le might be wearied after the present stimulus should 
cease to operate. But after some time he appeared in an ele- 
ment for which he was born. To cut the knot which calm 
prudence was puzzled to untie was worthy of the magnificence 
of his genius. He entered into no subtlety of reasoning, but 
was aroused by the now apparent spirit of the people. As a 
pillar of fire, which, notwithstanding the darkness of the pros- 
pect, would conduct to the promised laud, he inflamed, and 
was followed by the convention. His eloquence unlocked the 
secret springs of the human heart, I'obbed danger of all its 
terror, and broke the keystone in the arch of royal power." 
Opposition had been manifested to the motion in the Commit- 
tee of the "Whole, but, overwhelmed and led captive by the 
orator, it but swelled his triumph. 

It is the distinguished honor of Virginia that by her resolu- 
tion of May, 1765, she commenced, and by her resolutions of 
May, 1776, she completed, the American Revolution, for all 
that remained was to maintain the position she had reached. 
She has not, however, been so fortunate as to wear her honors 
unchallenged. John Adams in 1818, upon the appearance of 
Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry, denied that Henry's resolu- 
tions of May, 1765, commenced the revolution, and claimed 
that James Otis, in resisting writs of assistance in 1761, was 
entitled to that honor. The venerable patriot had permitted 
his zeal for Massachusetts to mislead him, and claimed for 
another what he had yielded to Mr. Henry in 1776. On the 
3d of June of that year he wrote to Mr. Henry these words : 
" I know of none so competent to the task (of framing a con- 
stitution for Virginia) as the author of the first Virginia reso- 
lutions against the stamp act, who will have the glory with 
posterity of beginning and concluding this great revolution." 

The honor of being the first to propose independence has 
4 



26 T II E N A T I N A L 

been contested I)y Xortli Carolina, which elainiB a [irior decla- 
ration, but this claim lias been so comiilctcl}- ovcrtlirown liy 
my learned and venerable friend, the Hon. Hugh Blair 
Griffsbv, in bis " Discourse on the Virs^inia Convention of 
1776," that I need only state very briefly some of the grounds 
for disallowing it. It is claimed that the Committee of Meck- 
lenburg County, in North Carolina, on the 20th of May, 1775, 
unanimously declared that county " sovereign, free, and inde- 
pendent, and absolved from all allegiance to the British 
Crown," and adopted laws, and appointed oiBcers to execute 
them. It is not pretended that this proceeding was ever pub- 
lished till 1819, forty-four years afterwards, when a copy was 
said to be found in the handwriting of the secretary of the meet- 
ing, J. McNitt Alexander, who was dead, and who had made 
a memorandum on the paper stating "that it might not be 
literally correct, though fundamentally, as the original papers 
were burned." The following facts are undoubted : On the 31st 
of May, 1775, at the same place, the same Committee passed a 
very difterent set of resolutions, which were published at the 
' time in several newspapers, and denounced by the governor of 
the State, providing for a temporary government of the county, 
and for officers to be selected in a different way, and expressly 
limiting the operation of their resolves "till Grreat Britain 
should resign its unjust and arbitrary pretensions with respect 
to America," a course taken in nearly every Colony. On the 
23d of August, 1775, the Provincial Congress of Nortli Caro- 
lina subscribed a test, required of its members by that body, 
which distinctly professes allegiance to the British crown; and 
Thomas Polk, John Phifer, and J. McNitt Alexander, the dele- 
gates from Mecklenburg County, and members of its county 
committee present on the 20th of May preceding, signed this 
test. On the 4th of September the same body voted that the 
plan of genei'al confederation between the United Colonies was 
not then eligible, and " that the present association ought to be 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. Z i 

furtlier relied on for bringing about a reconciliation with the 
parent State." And on the 8th of September, the same body 
unanimously adoi)ted an address to the inhabitants of Great 
Britain — of course voted for by the Mecklenburg delegates 
whom I have mentioned — in which it is said : "We have been 
told that independence is our object ; that wc seek to shake off 
all connection with the parent State. Cruel suggestion ! Do 
not all our professions, all our actions, uniformly contradict 
this? We again declare, and invoke that Almighty Being 
who searches the recesses of the human heart, and knows our 
most secret intentions, that it is our most earnest wish and 
prayer to be restored, with the other United Colonies, to the 
state in which we and they were placed before the year 1763." 

If, then, the county of Mecklenburg, Iforth Carolina, through 
its county Committee, made a declaration of final separation 
and independence on the 20th of May, 1775 — which has not 
been proven as yet — it appears that eleven daj's afterwards the 
same Committee at the same place repudiated it, and three of 
its members, among them its secretary, on whose loose memory 
it is now sought to establish it, on the 24th of August and the 
8th of September following, by their signatures and votes in 
the Provincial Congress, expressly denied that they had ever 
intended independence. With all due respect to our North 
Carolina cousins, I may be permitted to say, that such a decla- 
ration of independence, if established, is nothiiig to boast of. 
Before the cock crew twice, they had denied it thrice. 

Equally groundless is the attempt of IS'orth Carolina to sup- 
plement her claim by quoting the instructions to her delegates 
in the Continental Congress, passed the 12th of April, 1776. 
These instructions merely removed her previous restrictions, 
and empowered the ]!f orth Carolina delegates in Congress " to 
concur with the delegates of the other Colonies in declaring 
independence," but leaving the matter to their discretion — a 



28 THENATIONAL 

discretion which the delegates from some of the other Colo- 
nies already had. 

The Virghiia Convention entrusted her command to Thomas 
N^elson, one of her delegates to Congress, and upon his arrival 
in Philadelphia, Richard Henry Lee was selected to make the 
motion. Nor could this honor have heen more worthily be- 
stowed. Of honored ancestry, large fortune, splendid intel- 
lect, and ample learning, from the time he offered his 3'outli- 
ful sword to the unfortunate Braddock he had been cons2:)ic- 
uous for his public spirit, and had early taken rank with 
the foremost of the American patriots. Tall and command- 
ing in person, with the nolile countenance of a Roman, the 
courage of a Csesar, and the eloquence of a Cicero, at the 
bidding of Virginia, he arose on the 7th day of June, 1776, 
and in her name urged his countrymen no longer to hesitate, 
but pressing forward, to cross the Rubicon, and secure to 
themselves and to their posterity those inalienable rights 
bestowed upon them by their Creator. He moved, in the 
language of the Virginia Convention, " That these United 
Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent 
States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the 
British Crown, and that all political connection between them 
and the State of Great Britain is, and onglit to be, totally 
dissolved ; that it is expedient forthwith to take the most 
effectual measures for forming foreign alliances; that a plan 
of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective 
Colonies for their consideration and approbation." The motion 
was seconded b}- "glorious old John Adams," and Massachu- 
setts stood by the side of Virginia. Her ardent and eloquent 
son proved himself the colossus of the debate which followed 
and continued through several days. Xor was Pennsylvania 
content to be represented by her halting Dickinson, but her 
anient patriotism found utterance through her profound jihi- 
losopher and statesman, Benjamin Franklin, whose words of 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 29 

distilled wisdom fell from his lips like proverbs from the pien 
of Solomon. Of the eloquent speech with which Mr. Lee 
introduced the resolution of independence only a faint outline 
has heen preserved. It is claimed by the historian, however, 
to be sul)stantially correct. Of this I will only detain you 
with an exti'act : " The question," said he, " is not whether 
we shall acquire an increase of territorial dominion, or wick- 
edly wrest from others their just possessions, but whether we 
shall preserve or lose forever that liberty which we have 
inherited from our ancestors, which we have pursued across 
tempestuous seas, and which we have defended in this land 
against barbarous men, ferocious beasts, and an inclement sky. 
And if so many and distinguished praises have alwaj^s been 
lavished upon the generous defenders of Greek and Roman 
liberty, what shall be said of us who defend a liberty which 
is founded, not on the capricious will of an unstable multitude, 
but upon immutable statutes and titulary laws ; not that 
which was the exclusive privilege of a few patricians, but that 
which is the property of all ; not that which was stained by 
iniquitous ostracisms, or the horrible decimation of armies, 
but that which is pure, temperate, and gentle, and conformed 
to the civilization of the age? Animated by liberty, the 
Greeks repulsed the innumerable army of Persians ; sustained 
by the love of independence the Swiss and the Dutch humbled 
the power of Austria by memorable defeats, and conquered a 
rank among nations. But the sun of America also shines 
upon the heads of the brave ; the point of our weapons is no 
less formidable than theirs; here also the same union prevails, 
the same contempt of danger and of death, in asserting the 
cause of country. Why then do we longer delay? "Why still 
deliberate? Let this happy day give birth to the American 
Republic. Let her arise, not to devastate and conquer, but to 
reestablish the reign of peace and of law. The eyes of Europe 
are fixed upon us ; she demands of us a living example of 



30 T 11 E N A T I N A L 

freedom tliat may exhibit a contrast, in the felicity of the 
citizen, to the ever-increasing tyranny whicli desolates her 
polluted shores. She invites us to prepare an asylum, where 
the unhappy may find solace and the persecuted repose. She 
invites us to cultivate a propitious soil, where that generous 
plant, which first sprang and grew in England, but is now 
withered b}' tlie poisonous blasts of Scottish tyrann}-, may 
revive and flourish, sheltering under its salubrious and inter- 
minable shade all the unfortunate of the human race. If we 
are not this day wanting in our duty to our country, the 
names of American legislatoi-s of 1770 will be placed by pos- 
terity at the side of those of Theseus, of Lycurgus, of Romulus, 
of Kuma, of the three Williams of Nassau, and of all those 
whose memory- has been and forever will be dear to virtuous 



men ! 



1" 



But it is not for me to trace the history of the motion to 
its grand consummation on the 4th of July, nor to tell of the 
expenditure of blood and treasure, freely offered, in establish- 
ing it before all the world against the most powerful nation 
of the earth. Virginia moved, and America established inde- 
pendence and regulated liberty. Vitalized and directed by 
the heaven-born principles of liberty and order, our develop- 
ment and growth have surpassed that of all other nations of 
the earth, though scarcely out of our infancy, and to-day we 
give undoubted evidence that in all that makes a nation great 
we rank with the foremost. 

Fellow-citizens of these United States: In this year of the 
celebration of the birth of the nation, let us recur to the funda- 
mental principles underlying and supporting our institutions, 
and to which we owe our greatness. Let us look well to the 
title-deeds of our liberties, and restore the ancient landmarks 
where they have been removed. Let us transmit to our pos- 
terity in its integrit}' the rich heritage received from our 
fathers ; and may the God of our fathers be our God, and pre- 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 



31 



serve our civil and religious liberties to us, and to our children, 
and to our children's children, till time shall be no more, and 
the Sun of Righteousness shall he seen purpling the east — 
pencilling the day-dawn of perfect liberty and perfect order. 

" Yea, Trutli and Justice then, 

AA^ill down return to men, 
Orb'd in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing, 

Mercy will sit between, 

Tiironed in celestial sheen, 
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering ; 

And heaven as at some festival, 
Will open wide the gates of her high palace-hall." 




THE 



"^ -5^^^ 



O^^ 



,V'' 



\ 



^ettHiiil 



i^otii^ 



''^^^.. 



'^^;> 







Anniversary of July 2d, iyy6. 



PROCEEDINGS 



HALL OF INDEPENDENCE, JULY i, 1876. 



1776. 



JULY 



2. 



1876. 



On the morning of Satnrdiiy, July 1st, there assembled at 
Independence Hall, in tlie room occupied by the National 
Museum, those persons who had been invited to contribute 
biographical sketches of the men of the Revolutionary period, 
where they were received by the ladies of the Board of Man- 
agement, and by the Committee on the J^aticnial Centennial 
Commemoration. 

At 11.30 A. M. the doors of Independence Chamber were 
thrown open, and the American authors and antiquaries of 
1876, passed into the shrine of lil)crty as a chorus of fifty 
voices rendered Whittier's great Centennial Hymn. 

The Committee on the Restoration of Independence Hall, 
accompanied by the Mayor of the city, who occujjied seats on 
either side of the President's chair and table, leaving the 
former significantly vacant, immediately arose, and Colonel 
Frank M. Etting, Cliairman of tlie Committees on the Resto- 
ration of Independence llall and of the ISTational Centennial 
Commemoration, addressed the assemblage. 



ADDRESS OP OOL. ETTING. 

Ladies and Gentlejien : — 

On behalf of the city of Philadelphia, as well as of the Com- 
mittees on Restoration of Independence Hall, and of the Na- 
tional Centennial Commemoration, I bid you welcome to this 
room. As the result of four years' labor we seek to present 



36 TIIENATIONAL 

to you no mere spectacle of physical sight, but to aflbrd j-ou 
the means of a spiritual vision that will enable you to see 
through a eentur}-. Yonder parchment l)rought liack b^- us, 
scarce bears trace of the signatures, the execution of which 
made fifty-six names imperishable. This table is no longer 
surrounded, in theflesh,hy Hancock, Franklin, Jefferson, Rich- 
ard Henry Lee, the Adamses, and the host of patriots who 
clustered here in June and Juh^llTG. These chairs that once 
were theirs are now vacant. Everything that was perishable 
has passed away, and wliat is Ifft to us we may trul}' say has 
put on immortality. The "rising sun" of lilxn-ty and of per- 
fect union, which Franklin pointed out to Jefferson as de- 
picted upon the back of this yqyj chair, when occupied bj^ 
Washington in 1787, as President of the Convention for 
framing the Constitution of the United States, now shines 
undimmed b}- the shadow of any subsequent event, since we 
have permitted no trace of any memorial to remain in this 
chamber that can recall any sectional differences. All the 
associations that here present themselves to you are intended 
to enable cacli individual for himself to exercise the miracu- 
lous touch, to once more "set upon their feet" the Founders 
of the Republic. The actual lineaments of their faces are 
shown upon these walls, and every material adjunct in the 
adoption of our Magna Charta has now been returned to its 
former place of use. You, ladies and gentlemen, have done 
the rest. You have shown us in prose and in verse how 
these men lived, and how they moved, and what they strug- 
gled for. Thus, in the whole category of events of our Cen- 
tennial epocli, there is no commemoration of greater signifi- 
cance tlian the very act of your assembling in this chamber. 
It was here just one hundred years ago to-day that the 
Founders of the Republic met together, predetermined to 
call into being a new power upon the earth. At the instance 
of one of their number the final vote was put oft" until the 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 37 

morrow. Thus it was on the second of July, 1776, that the 
final act was done — the United States became a ^N^ation. 

You, of all tlie citizens of the United States, come here to- 
day to Ijuild up a CENOTAPH of letters to the memory of those 
men the like of which is not afforded in the history of the 
world — no rain, no sun can ever reach it, and it must endure 
as long as Liberty and the Englisii language survive. 

If it he permitted to departed spirits again to visit the 
scenes of their earthly work, may we not invoke the shade 
of Washington again to occujiy the President's chair, and to 
summon around him that host whose memories we hold so 
dear? In consonance at least with what we know to be their 
wislies, I shall now request the Rev. William White Bronson 
to ask the blessing of God upon our proceedings. 

PIIAYKR. 

God, ^^'hose name is excellent in all the earth, and Thy 
glory above the heavens; who a century ago didst insjiire and 
direct the hearts of the delegates in Congress to lay the per- 
petual foundations of peace, liberty, and safct3-; we bless and 
adore Thy Glorious Majesty for tliis Thy loving kindness and 
providence. And do Thou, who hast instructed us in Thy holy 
word to render honor to whom it is due, pour down Thy bless- 
ing upon these Thy servants, here assembled to perpetuate the 
sacred memory of the Fathers of our Republic. May this 
tribute of a Nation's gratitude be as extended and as abidins: 
as the honored names which it is designed to commemorate. 
May the inhabitants of this land, while with hearts and voices 
they proclaim the praises of the assertors of their rights, the 
defenders of their liberties, and the vindicators of their laws, 
be perpetuating a call to great and virtuous achievements. 
And may all who, like our worthy departed of blessed memory, 
shall be eminent benefactors of mankind, like them, also, find 



38 T HE NATIONAL 

a grateful pco[ik; lionoring them in their lives and in their 
deaths. Having inherited the lustre of their names and enjoy- 
ing the fruits of their labors, may this nation witness a suc- 
cession of great and good men, to the glory of Th}- name and 
the prosperity of Thy people to the end of time. Grant, 
Lord, we beseech Thee, that this our season of national rejoic- 
ing may he so ordered by the sanctifying power of Thy Holy 
Spirit that we forfeit not our title to be nnml)ered among Tlij' 
faithful ]ieople. Control the words of all; restrain their appe- 
tites; hallow their intercourse; keep far away the occasions of 
disagreements; sulidue the uprisings of angr}' passions; shed 
abroad the spirit of meekness and forbearance; teach all, of 
ever}- class, to rejoice one with another; quicken them to acts 
of l)rotherly love. Gnint that whatsoever holy suggestions 
they may an}- of them receive, they may carefull}- cherish, nnd 
fill them with such gladness of heart, that they, realizing in 
earthly things the gifts of Thy boundless love, may be encour- 
aged thereby to press onward to the enjoj^ments of Thyself, 
when all Thy gondness sliull be revealed. (J, Thou Fountain 
of Wisdom, who givest to all men liljerally, and upbraidest 
not, grant that Thy servants here assembled, and all on whom 
Thou hast bestowed the treasures of intellect, may be led unto 
right apprehensions of all things. Endow them with humility 
and soberness of mind. Bestow upon tliem a discerning spirit, 
a sound judgment, and an honest and good heart, sincerely 
disposed to employ all the talents thou hast, or shall entrust 
them withal, to Thy honor and glory and the good of man- 
kind; that ripening the precious fruits of intellect and of all 
goodness, tlieir profiting may appear unto all men, and that 
they may give a comfortable account of their time and of their 
acquirements to Thee, their God, when as stewards we shall 
be summoned to our final reckoning. Almighty God, Who 
hast, in all ages showed forth Thy power and mercy in the 
Wonderful presi'rvation of Thy church, and in the protection 



C E N T E N N t A I. C M M E M K A T I N . 



39 



of every people [trot'essiiig Thy holy and eternal truth and 
putting their sure trust in Thee, we yield Thee our unfeigned 
thanks and praise for all Thy mercies to this people, and more 
especially for that signal and wonderful manifestation of Thy 
providence, which we now commemorate, wherefore not unto 
us, Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name be ascribed all 
honor and glory, in all churches of the saints, from generation 
to generation, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen." 

At the conclusion of the prayer, the Mayor of the city re- 
quested the Hon. William A. Whitehead, Corresponding Sec- 
retary of the N^ew Jersey Historical Society, to call the roll of 
authors, who were then requested to deposit, each for himself, 
as his name was called, the biographical sketch which he had 
prepared. 



ROLL OP AUTHORS. 



NAME. 

Adams, Charles Francis, Massachusetts. 
Alleu, Ethau, New York. 
Amory, Thomas C, Massachusetts. 
Angell, James B., Rhode Island. 

Batch, Thomas, Philadelphia. 
Bartlett, John Russell, Rhode Island. 
Bell, Charles II., New Hampshire. 
Bell, John J., New Hampshire. 
Bellows, Henry Whitney, New York. 
Biddle, Craig, Philadelphia. 
Bouton, Nathaniel, New Hampshire. 
Bradford, A. B., Pennsylvania. 
Bradley, Joseph P., District of Columbia. 
Braxton, Carter M., Virginia. 
Briuton, John H., Philadelphia. 
Brock, R. Alouzo, Virginia. 
Brown, John, Maryland. 
Browne, William Hand, Maryland. 
Butfet, E. P., New Jersey. 
Burdge, Franklin, New Y'ork. 

Canning, E. C, New Y'ork. 
Carpenter, John C, JIaryland. 
Chew, Samuel, Philadelphia. 



SUBJECT. 

John Hancock. 
Philip Livingston. 
John Sullivan. 
James Mitchell Varnum. 

William Sliippen. 
Samuel Ward. 
Nathaniel Folsom. 
John Taylor Gilman. 
Henry Wisner. 
Edward Biddle. 
George Frost. 
George Clymer. 
William Burnet. 
Carter Braxton. 
William Smith. 
Richard Henry Lee. 
Joshua Seney. 
Robert Alexander. 
Abraham Clark. 
Simon Boerum. 

John Lansing. 
Richard Ridgley. 
Benjamin Chew. 



40 



THE N A T I N A L 



NAME. 

Clairbornc, J. F. H.. Louisiana. 
Clemens, Samuel L., Connecticut. 
Cocke, William Archer, Florida. 
Cooke, Joliu Esten, Virginia. 
Co.\, Christopher C, District of Columbia. 
Cullum, George W., United States Army, 

Dalrymple, E. A., Jlaryland. 
Dana, Jr., Richard H., Massachusetts. 
Darlington, William M., Pennsylvania. 
Davis, William W. H., Pennsylvania. 
Dc Lancey, Edward F., New York. 
De Peyster, Frederick. New York. 
Di.x, John A., New York. 
Drake, Samnel Adams, iMassachusetts. 
Duane, William, Philadelphia. 

Eastman, Samuel C, New Hampshire. 
Egle, William II., Pennsylvania. 
Elmer, Lucius Q. C, New Jersey. 
Etting, Frank M., Philadelphia. 

Fairbanks, George R., Tennessee. 
Flanders, Henry, Philadelphia. 
Forrest, Douglass, Maryland. 
Forney, John W., Philadelphia. 
Frothingham, Richard, Massachusetts. 
Furness, Horace Howard, Philadelphia. 
Fulhcy, J. Smith, Pennsylvania. 

Gammell, Willi.im, Rhode Island. 
Gayarre, Charles, Louisiana. 
Gilman, Arthur, New Ilaniiishire. 
Gratz, Simon, Philadeljihia. 
Greene, George W., Rliode Island. 
Grigsby, Hugh Blair, Virginia. 

Hale, Edward Everett, Massachusetts. 
Hammond, Mrs. L. M., New York. 
Hanson, George A., Slaiyland. 
Harrison, Samuel A., Maryland. 
Hart, Mrs. Armine Nixon, Philadelphia. 
Hart, Charles Henry, Philadelphia. 
Hatfield, Edwin F., New Jerse}'. 
Hedge, J. Dunham, Rhode Island. 
Henry, William Wirt, Virginia. 
Higginson, Thomas W., Rhode Island. 
Hillard, George S., Massachusetts. 
Hoadley, Charles J., Connecticut. 
Hoes, K. Randall, New Jersey. 



SCBJECT. 

Abraham Baldwin. 
Francis Lightfoot Lee. 
William Richardson Davie. 
George Wythe. 
Matthew Tilghman. 
Richard Montgomerj'. 

Thomas Johnson, Jr. 
Francis Dana. 
John Armstrong. 
George Taylor. 
William Allen. 
William Floyd. 
John Cruger. 
Arthur Middleton. 
Joseph Reed. 

Josiah Bartlett. 
William Maclay. 
Jonathan Elmer. 
John Dickinson. 

Edward Telfair. 
Thomas Fitzimmons. 
Daniel Dulany. 
Thomas MifiJin. 
James Otis. 

Jonathan Bayard Smith. 
William Cliugan. 

Stephen Hopkins. 
John Rutledge. 
Nicholas Gilman. 
Richard Butler. 
Nathaniel Greene. 
Peyton Randolph. 

James Lovell. 

James Madison. 

Benjamin Contee. 

AVilliam Hindman. 

Robert Morris. 

John Nixon. 

Jonathan Dickinson Sergeant. 

Henry Marchaut. 

Patrick Henry. 

William Ellery. 

Christopher Gadsden. 

Silas Deane. 

John Witherspoon. 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 



41 



NAME. 

Holland, J. G., New York. 

Hopkiuson, Oliver, Philadelphia. 
Hoyt, Alhert H., Massachusetts. 
Humphreys, A. A., United States Army. 
Hunter, Richard Stockton, Philadelphia. 

Jones, Horatio Gates, Philadelphia. 
Jones, William Alfred, Connecticut. 

Kingsley, William L., Connecticut. 



.SUBJECT. 

George Washington. 
Francis Hopkiuson. 
Samuel Livermore. 
Charles Huraphrej-s. 
Dauiel Roberdeau. 

Ebenezer Kinnersley. 
Thomas Stone. 

Samuel Huntington. 



Lauman, Charles, District of Columbia. William Samuel Johnson. 

Le Vert, Octavia Walton, Georgia. George Walton. 

Lincoln, Jolm L., Rhode Island. John Collins. 

Lindsley, J. Berrien, Tennessee. Lyman Hall. 

Lippitt, Mrs. Mary A., Rhode Island. William Barton. 

Lodge, Henry Cabot, Massachusetts. Samuel Ilolten. 

Lossiug, Benson J., New York. Philip Schuyler. 

Meredith, Miss Cathariue K., Philadelphia. Gouverneur ^lorris. 

John Carroll. 
William Patterson. 
Robert Goldsborough. 
Jeremiah Townley Chase. 

Hugh Williamson. 
William Carmichael. 
Isaac Norris. 



Merrifield, Joseph, Maryland. 
Messier, Abraham, New Jersey. 
Morris, John G., Maryland. 
McClellau, W. J., Maryland. 

Nevin, J. Williamson, Pennsylvania. 
Nevin, William W., Philadelphia. 
Norris, George AY., Philadelphia. 



Parker, Joel, New Jersey. John Hart. 

Penny i)acker, Samuel W., Philadelphia. Samuel J. Atlce. 

Phelps, Miss Eliz. Stuart, Massachusetts. Abigail Adams. 

Pinckncj% Charles C, South Carolina. Thomas Pinckuey. 

Quinc.Y, Edmund, Massachusetts. Josiah Quincy, Jr. 

Quincy, Miss Eliza Susan, Massachusetts. Josiah Quincy, Sr. 



Kamsay, J. G. M., Tennessee. 
Robhins, Chandler, Massachusetts. 

Seidensticker, O., Philadelphia. 
Silliman, Benjamin, Connecticut. 
Simmons, George A., Massachusetts. 
Smith, John Jay, Philadelphia. 
Steiner, Lewis H., Marj-land. 
Stevens, Francis Putnam, INIarjiand. 
Stevens, John Austin, New York. 
Stone, Frederick D., Philadelphia. 
Stone, William L., New York. 
Strother, David Hunter, Virginia. 
Stryker, Mrs. Helen B., New Jersey. 
Slryker, William S., New Jersey. 



William Blount. 
David Ramsay. 

Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg. 

Joseph Spencer. 

Samuel Adams. 

James Logan. 

Richard Potts. 

John Henry, Jr. 

John Alsop. 

Charles Thomson. 

George Clinton. 

Edmund Pendleton. 

Elias Boudinot. 

Nathaniel Scudder. 



42 THE NATIONAL 

NAME. SUBJECT. 

Taylor, Miss Cornelia F., Pliiladelpliia. Cyrus Griffin. 

Thomas. Douglass H., Maryland. John Hanson. 

Thornton, J. Wingalc, Massachusetts. Mattiiew Thornton. 

Throckmorton, B. AV., New Jersey. John De Hart. 

Toner, J. 31., United States Army. John Morgan. 

Travelli, Joseph S., Pennsylvania. Arthur St. Clair. 

Trumbull, J. Hammond, Connecticut. Eliphalet Dyer. 

T3'ler, Samuel, District of Columbia. Luther Martin. 

Wallace, John William, Philadelphia. Thomas Willing. 

Westcott, Thompson, Philadelphia. James Smith. 

Wheeler, John H., North Carolina. Richard Dobbs Spaight. 

Whitehead, William A., New Jersey. Richard Stockton. 

Winthrop, Robert C, Massachusetts. Artemas Ward. 

Wood, George J., Connecticut. Oliver Ellsworth. 

Woolsou, Miss Constance F., Florida. Henry Middleton. 

As the name of Charles Thomson resounded through the 
Hall, the chairman of the Committee turned to the Mayor 
and officially announced the restoration, on that day, " to the 
chamber, of the last piece of furniture known to be outstand- 
ing and properly authentioatcd — the identical desk used by 
Charles Thomson as Secretary of Congress — which has been 
handed down from generation to generation in the family of 
Francis Hopkinson, one of the Signers of the Declaration of 
Independence, and now deposited by his great-granddaughter, 
Mrs. E. A. Foggo, upon the specific trust and condition that 
Independence Chamber shall remain forever in the same state 
as this day officially reported — otherwise to be returned to 
the family." 

The Mayor gracefully accepted the table, and invited the 
Congress of Authors, at the conclusion of their proceedings 
in the chamber, to follow him to the platform erected in Inde- 
pendence Square, in order that the general public might par- 
ticipate in the ceremonial of tlie day. 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 43 



THE NATIONAL CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 



ANNIVERSARY OF JULY 2, 1776. 

'The 2d day of July, 177G, will be the most memorable epocha iu the history of America. I am 
apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generatioas as the great anniversary 
festival ; it ought to be commemorated as tbe day of doUverauce by solenm acts of devotion 
to God Almighty." — Lttier 0/ John Adams to his icife on Zd day of July, 177G. 



CEREMONIES IN INDEPENDENCE SQUARE, 

July I, 1876, at 12.30 P. M. 

Hon. John William Wallace, President of the Historical Society of Penn- 
sylvania, will preside. 

PROGRAMME. 

Centennial Triumphal MAncn (Helfricii) . . . Band. 

Introduction of the Presiding OiEcer by his Honor, Wm. S. Stoklev, M.ayor 

of Philnilelphia. 
AoniiESS by the Presiding CifBcer 

Centennial Uymn. Words by Whittier. Music by Paine. . . CnORUS. 

Address .... William V. McKean, Esq., of Pennsylvania 

God Save America ........ Band. 

Address . . . Hon. Leveuett Saltonstall, of Massachusetts. 

Thk Voice of the Old Bell. Words by W. Bradsiiaw. Music by Miss 

Jolia S. Thompson ..... Solo and Chords. 

Tbe Solo will be veodered by Mr. Geo. A. Co.si,Y. 
Address . . His Exceileney Henry Lippitt, Governor of Rhode Island. 

National Airs. Hermann ....... Band. 

Address .... Hon. Frederick DePeyster, of New Yorlt. 

Centennial Ode. Words by S. C. Upiiam. Music by Adam Geibel. . Chords. 
Address ..... Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar, of Mississippi. 

Centennial Hymn Words by Wm. Fenimore. Music by- Wm. P. Feni- 

MORE ......... Chorus. 

ADDRES.S . Hon. Ben.jamin Harris Brewster, of Pennsylvania. 

The Star Spangled Banner ... By Geo. A. Conly and Chorus. 

Benediction . . Rev. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, of South Carolina. 

Hon. John B. Gordon, of Georgia, Gen. Winfield S. Hancock, and Hon. 

Joel Parker, of New Jersey, it is expected, will also address the 

assemblage. 
The Vocal and Instrumental Music, under the supervision of Mr. Simon Gr.\tz, 
by the Choral Society of the Centennial Musical Association; Leader, Jean Louis; 
and the Military Band of the same Associ;ition ; Leader, Theo. Hermann, Conductor, 
Prof. Jean Louis. 

By order of the 

COMMITTEE ON RESTORATION OF INDEPENDENCE HALL, 

CHARLES S. KEYSER, 

Master of Ceremonies. 



44 THENATIONAL 

The platform, which had been built at the rear of the Hall, 
was occupied hj over five thousand people, and covered the 
identical ground from which the Declaration of Independence 
was first read and proclaimed to the people, bj- John Nixon, 
upon the 8th of July, 1776. 

Delegations were present from 

The United States Centennial Commission; 

The Foreign Commissioners to the Exposition ; 

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania ; 

The City authorities of Philadelphia ; 

The Clergy; 

Members of Congress and Officers of the Army and !N"av3\ 

At exactly thirty minutes past twelve, the hour appointed 
for the exercises in tlie square, while the band played the 
Centennial Triumplial March, the Hon. John William Wal- 
lace, the President of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 
escorted hy Hon. William S. Stokley, Mayor, appeared upon 
the stage. 

ADDRESS OF THE MAYOR. 

On arriving at the speakers' stand, the Mayor, amid the 
applause of the multitude, said : — 

It l)ecomes my pleasure to introduce to you Hon. John 
William Wallace, President of the Historical Society of Penn- 
sylvania, who has consented to preside on this occasion. 

addres.s of mr. wallace. 
Fellow-Citizens of the CTnited States, and Honored Guests 

FROM MANY LaNDS : — 

We assemble this morning to commemorate one of the great 
days of our great year of freedom and independence ; a da}' 
not less important tJian that illustrious Fourtli on which 
we seem to be already entering, and whicli we shall soon 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 45 

celebrate so grandly. Let me say a word as to the history 
of thig 2d of July, and why we celebrate that day. The 
gentleman whom I will introduce to you directly will speak, 
perhaps, of it more fully. On the 7th of June, 1776, Richard 
Henry Lee, of Virginia, that State of renowned and venerable 
name, introduced into the Congress which assembled in yonder 
chamber, this resolution : — 

^'■Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right 
ought to be, free and independent States; that they are 
absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that 
all political connection between them and the State of Great 
Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved." 

On the 2d of July, 1776 — the day Mdiich we now commemo- 
rate — after our fathers had consulted much, and pondered 
much, that resolution was passed ; and, so far as anything bu 
actual and successful war could complete it, revolution was 
accomj^lished, and the British Provinces of America were free 
and independent States. We can understand, therefore, why 
John Adams wrote as he did, on the Sd, to his wife, that the 
2d of July would l)e " the most memorable epocha in the history 
of America," and that it would "be celebrated by succeeding 
generations as the great anniversary festival, be solemnized 
with pomp and parade, with shows, games, spoi'ts, guns, bon- 
fires, and illuminations, from one end of the Continent to the 
other, from this time forward forevermore." 

Everything relating to this great resolution is interesting to 
all Americans, and I exhibit to you a facsimile of it, which 
Mr. Etting, at page 94 of his valuable book, recently published, 
entitled " An Historical Account of the Old State House of 
Pennsylvania, now known as the Hall of Independence," has 
given to us from the original itself, in Mr. Lee's handwriting. 

The handwriting is as bold as John Hancock's. 

[Mr. Wallace, holding up Mr. Etting's work, opened at 
page 94, here exhibited the facsimile.] 



46 THENATIONAL 

This resolution of the 2d, as I have said, was really the 
act which made us independent of Great Britain. But Con- 
gress, in those days, sat with closed doors. Its sessions were 
secret. But few outside knew that independence had been 
resolved on, and therefore the Declaration, both of the act of 
Independence, and of the causes which imjrelled us to it — that 
paper rocpiired by " a decent respect to the opinions of man- 
kind" — was made in the most solemn form, and published to 
the world. 

The 2d and the 4tli of July are, therefore, complements of 
each other. The 2d is, in truth, the beginning and the cause 
of the 4th. Tlie 4th is the consummation and crown of 
the 2d. 

Appreciating in this, its true and dignified value, the day 
winch we now commemorate, the Committee on the Restora- 
tion of the Hall — to whom we have been so greatlj' indebted 
for much that gives effect to tlie present season — this Commit- 
tee, I say, some months ago, sent letters to the descendants of 
the men of 1776, to the historians of the country, her poets, her 
men of letters, and her antiquaries, summoning them to meet on 
this day in that venerable Hall on which you arc looking, and 
there to l)ring for preservation in that vast Museum, formed 
by the efforts of that same Committee, protected b\' the same 
roof which protects the Hall of Independence — and justly 
styled iSTational — an authentic biograply' of some of our eai-ly 
patriots; thus to contribute to the erection of an imperishable 
monument to the memory of those whose deeds make the 
glory of our land. 

Eesponding to this honorable call, these distinguished per- 
sons have come from all parts of this wide republic as to a 
sanctuary, and in the presence of that spiritual band whom 
mental vision ever there summons up with the distinctness 
of reality, they are now depositing in yonder hall, upon tlie 
table of John Hancock, as upon a shrine, tliese solemn docu- 



C K N T E N N I A L COMMEMORATION. 47 

mcnts. So soou as they have performed this high office, they 
will present themselves on this platform, and you will have 
the pleasure of being addressed by some of them. 

Whittier's Centennial Jlymn was then sung by the chorus. 

At the close of the music, the Congress of Authors, who 
had now finished their literary duties in the Hall, came for- 
ward and took their seats in a distinguished portion of the 
platform that had been prepared for them. 

Mr. Wallace then said : I will present to you, as the first 
speaker, a gentleman of our own city who bears a patriot name. 
He is known more widelj' by his pen than by his voice, and 
has far more readers than acquaintances. He will give you 
an accurate historical sketch of matters relating to the day. 
I introduce to you Mr. William V. McKean. 

ADDRESS OP MR. McKEAN. 

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: — 

In your order of proceeding it is allotted to me to speak 
of the events of July 1st and 2d, a hundred years ago — events 
we are here to-day to commemorate. We are gathered in a 
place illustrious in its historic memories — a place hallowed as 
far as any spot can be hallowed by human agency. There is 
no other place in our country so intimately associated with 
the events that made and preserved us a nation. 

Here, within these walls, the commission which, on the 
17th of June, 1775, placed Washington at the head of the 
American army, was signed, attested and delivered into his 
hands. Here, on the 15th of May, 1776, it was declaimed by 
Congress that the exercise of every kind of authority by the 
government of Great Britain in the United Colonies "should 
be totally suppressed," and that all the powers of government 
should be " exercised iiuder the authority of the people of the 



48 THENATIONAL 

Colonies." Here, on the 2d of July, 177G, was adopted the 
resolution which, on that daj, declared the United Colonies 
to he free and independent States. Here, two days later, July 
4th, was adopted the immortal " Declaration" of that resolu- 
tion, and of the reasons for the separation from Great Britain ; 
here it was signed, proclaimed, and sent forth on its heneficeut 
mission to mankind. Here, later on, the government of the 
Confederation was framed, signed, ratified and proclaimed — 
those articles of confederation and perpetual union hetween 
the States, which kept them together and led the Avay to the 
Constitution; and here, in 1787, was framed, signed and 
ordained that nohle structure of government — the written 
Constitution of the United States. 

Here, too, and in the building at the Sixth Street corner of 
the square, for the greater part of twenty years after the Con- 
federation was proclaimed and the Constitution was ordained, 
was performed the labor of legislation and organization which 
was necessary to enable the yoinig nation to discharge its 
duties, and to get the new government into working order. 
All these memorable and momentous things, and many more 
in the history of the United States, were done here. You 
know what manner of men they were who performed those 
admiralile works, and in what reverence their memories are 
held. 

It was here within these walls that the merchants and 
planters, and farmers and mechanics, and lawyers, sent into 
Congress by the then obscure and remote American Colonies, 
became translated into statesmen whose political ability' and 
wisdom, whose public virtues, and whose dignity of action 
challenged the attention and won the admiration and praise 
of the civilized world. Here they assembled — not for a 
casual occasion only, or for a few days or weeks, but for long 
months, and through many years — not a portion of them onlj^, 
but all of that resplendent constellation of illustrious men 



CENTENNIAL COM MEJM ORATION. 49 

whose names illumine the early history of political and civic 
events in the United States. It would make a long catalogue 
to recite them, and I shall not attempt it. The place where 
we arc now assembled was their public home. Here within 
these walls they sat and consulted— here within these grounds 
they walked and pondered. These places were once vocal 
with their voices — in anxious conference — in undertoned con- 
sultation and persuasion— in eloquent debate. If echoes were 
immortal things and could come back to us after the lapse of 
a hundred years, we might pause in reverence to-day, and 
harken with stilled breath for the reverberation of their voices 
in that chamber, and of their footfalls through that corridor 
and in these grounds where we now are. 

Then, Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is with 
reason, as well as from the impulses of patriotism, that we 
regard this place not only as the historic centre of our 
country, but as hallowed ground — hallowed so far as any 
earthly place can become so through the deeds of men, or by 
the work of human hands. 

I have mentioned briefly some of the memorable and con- 
trolling deeds done in this place. That which is the imme- 
diate subject of commemoration to-day is the adoption by 
Congress of Ricliard Henry Lee's Virginia Resolution, on the 
2d of July, 1776, whereby all political connection between 
the United Colonies and the government of Great Britain 
was then totally dissolved, and the colonies were then declared 
to be Free and Independent States. The consideration of 
that decisive Resolution had been postponed from the lOtii of 
June until the 1st of July, a hundred years ago to-day. The 
patriots who were in favor of an immediate and formal de- 
claration of the separation of the Colonies from any further 
political dependence upon the mother country, looked forward 
to the arrival of that first day of July with great and anxious 
solicitude — not that they doubted the adoption of the Resolu- 
7 



50 THENATIONAL 

t ion of Independence b}^ a sufficient majority of tlie Colonies, for 
tliat had been assured, but because of their earnest desire that 
the decisive act should go to the world as the unanimous voice 
of all the Colonies represented in the Congress. During the 
whole of the interval between the 10th of June and the first of 
July, Jefferson and John Adams, Chase and Rodney and 
McKean,andFrani'clin and James Smith, and Jonathan D. Ser- 
geant — and others, of course, but these particularly — had been 
diligently at work to insure a unanimous vote of the Colonies. 
Tiie people were ready, but the delegates from some of the 
Colonies were not. These delegates were not less patriotic 
than their more advanced and decided colleagues, but they 
Avere slow to say the final word tliat was to commit the 
people of their Colonies to the irrevocable Act of Separation 
— an act which would leave them no middle ground to stand 
upon — an act which must be fought out to victory by conflict 
of arms on the battle field — for failure there would leave 
them a conquered people, stripped of all their rights as 
political communities. 

On the 10th of June, the day when the first debate on 
Richard Henry Lee's Resolution was closed, the delegates 
who made up the majorities in the rej^rcseutation of six of 
the Colonies were still unprepared to vote for the final act of 
separation. Virginia and IN'orth Carolina and Georgia were 
ready to vote for independence, so were Massachusetts and 
Connecticut and New Hampshire and Rhode Island ; but the 
delegates from South Carolina were not, nor were those from 
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Mary- 
land. This led to the postponement until the 1st of July — a 
postponement agreed to by the more resolute advocates of in- 
dependence, in the full expectation that the interval of three 
weeks would enable them to bring about entire unanimitj'. 
But so determined and certain were the leading delegates of 
the Colonies already prepared, that they resolved . that, in 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 51 

order tliat no time should be lost by this postponement, com- 
mittees should be appointed to draft a Declaration, setting 
forth the reasons for the Resolution of Independence, and to 
prepare a form of Confederation for the future government of 
the Colonies. They and those who were like minded with 
them had no doubt as to the final issue ; but they kept ear- 
ncstl}' and diligently at work. Jonathan D. Sergeant under- 
took the duty of bringing about a change in the delegation 
from iS'ew Jerse}- ; Samuel Chase went home to Maryland to 
stimulate the convention of that Colony to send instructions 
for independence to their delegates in Congress; Cajsar Rodney 
went down into Sussex County, Delaware, to induce a more 
favorable tone in ijublic sentiment from that place; Thomas 
McKean, together with Benjamin Rush, Jas. Smith, and others, 
set to work to procure a popular and favorable expression 
from Pennsylvania. Thus the way was prepared for what it 
was hoped would be a unanimous, or nearly unanimous vote 
on the first of July. Public sentiment was being brought to 
bear upon the hesitating members from four out of the six 
uncertain Colonial delegations. The New York delegates re- 
mained passive, neither opposing nor helping, as they deemed 
the whole subject of separation outside of their instructions ; 
and South Carolina was too distant for such elibrts as were 
put into motion in the near at hand Colonies of !N^ew Jersey, 
Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Still her delegation 
was making progress, too. 

As early as the 15th of June Jonathan D. Sergeant wrote 
to John Adams that the new Delegates about to be elected to 
Congress from New Jersej'-, would be in Philadelphia by the 
first of July, and they would "vote plump." Thej-, in fixct, 
arrived on Friday, June 28th, three of the new Delegates 
being Dr. John Witherspoon, Richard Stockton, and Francis 
Hopkinson. Sergeant was entirely right about their senti- 
ments. New Jersey's voice was thus added to that of the 



52 THENATIONAL 

others in favor of independence, making eight out of the 
thirteen Colonies. 

Samuel Chase had a more time-consuming task in Maryland. 
There the peojile were right enough, but the Convention of 
the Colony Avas difficult to move in the desii-ed dii'ection. In 
order to counteract that spirit, county conventions had to be 
called, and pressure from them was brought to bear upon the 
members of the Provincial Convention sitting at Annapolis. 
They were instructed by the jieople to withdraw the former 
instructions to the Maryland delegates in the Congress at 
Philadelphia, and to authorize and empower the latter to con- 
cur with the other United Colonies, or a majority of them, in 
declaring the United Colonies free and independent States. 
This was accomplished by the 28th of June, and on that day 
Cliase sent an express from Annapolis to John Adams, at 
Pliiladelphia, advi.^sing him of the successful result of liis mis- 
sion. Under tlic stimulus of the popular uj)rising excited in 
the counties by Mr. Chase, the Annapolis Convention cast a 
unanimous vote in favor of the instructions for indejaendence. 
The instructions were received and road in Congress on the 
1st of July, a hundred years ago to-day — possibly at this very 
hour — and thus the voice of Maryland was added to those of 
the other Colonies already prepared, making nine Colonies out 
of the thirteen in favor of the Independence Resolution. 

The votes of four Colonies were still undecided, althougli 
that of Delaware was sure if Rodney should get back in time. 
He was still in Sussex, leaving his delegation in Congress 
evenly divided — George Read being against the resolution, 
whilst McKean was in favor of it. In the mean time, and as 
early as the 25th of June, Rush, and Smith, and McKean and 
others had procured a declaration from a popular Provincial 
Conference representing the people of the counties of Pennsyl- 
vania, expressing their willingness to concur in a vote by Con- 
gress declaring independence, and this was read in Congress 



CENTENNIAL COMMESIORATION. 53 

Tuesday, June 2otli. Even this did not decide the vote of 
Pennsylvania, for all but three of her delegates still remained 
of the contrary opinion. No change was brought about in 
the New York delegation, and none that was decisive in that 
from South Carolina. 

This was the condition of affairs when the momentous First 
day of July, 1776, arrived — the day to which the further con- 
sideration of Richard Henry Lee's Virginia Resolution had 
been postponed. Nine colonies were sure to vote for it, and 
ten, if Rodney should arrive from Delaware before the vote 
was called. Pennsylvania and South Carolina were still ad- 
verse, and New York declined to take part, as the whole 
subject of separation and independence was outside of their 
instructions. Upon meeting that First of July, Congress went 
into Committee of the "Whole House, to take up the resolution. 
Dr. Withersjioon and his New Jersey colleagues, being new 
members, desired to hear the arguments pro and con — for and 
against a declaration of independence. The reasons were 
given on both sides ; but, witli the exception of two or three 
members, it is uncertain who spoke. Richard Henry Lee, the 
mover of the Resolution, was absent in Virginia, because of 
sickness in his family ; Jefterson, who was a power with his 
pen and in committee, was no speaker on the floor of the 
House; Chase was still absent in Maryland, and Rodney had 
not yet returned from Delaware. It is known, however, that 
John Dickinson stated the case of the opposition to the Reso- 
lution, and that John Adams was the great champion of 
Independence on that day. It is not unlikely that young 
Rutledge, of South Carolina, described by Patrick Ileni-y as 
the most eloquent speaker in Congress, and James Wilson, of 
Pennsylvania, and R. R. Livingston, of New York, supported 
Dickinson — and that George Wythe, of Virginia, and Dr. 
Witherspoon supported the argument of Adams. But all ac- 
counts agree that John Adams was " the pillar," the " colossus" 



54 T II K N A T r N A L 

of the jiarty of Independence on the floor of Congress that 
day, and in the preceding dehate in Jnnc, and tliat his first of 
July speech made a powerful impression l)y its vigorous logic 
and its noble eloquence. What a privation to this age it is 
that we liave no authentic contemporary record of that great 
debate, so pregnant with the i'uture destiny of the American 
people ! 

On the evening of July first John Adams wrote to Samuel 
Chase that the debate took up most of the day. Jeft'erson 
wrote in 1787 that the debate lasted "nine hours" — until eve- 
ning — "without refreshment and without pause." Then the 
vote was taken in Committee of the Whole. Xine Colonies — 
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, 
JSTew Jei'sey, Maryland, Virginia, !N"orth Carolina, and Georgia 
— voted for the Resolution. Two Colonies — Pennsylvania 
and South Carolina — voted against it. Delaware was evenly 
divided, as Rodney was still absent, and New York, at the 
request of her delegation, was allowed to withdraw from the 
vote, having no new instructions. 

This vote, Mr. Chairman, you will remember, was taken in 
Committee of the Whole, and had yet to be considered in the 
House. The committee rose and reported their action to the 
House, and the vote was about to be taken there, when, ac- 
cording to the plain and brief phraseology of the official 
record, the resolution of the committee was read, and "the 
determination thereof was at the request of a colony post- 
poned until to-morrow." 

Tiiis In-ings us to the second day of July, 1776, the real date 
of the birth of the United States as an independent nation. 
The Colony, at whose request the vote had been postponed the 
day before, was South Carolina. The suggestion was made by 
I]dward Rutledge, who, according to Jefferson's notes made at 
the time, said that "he believed that his colleagues, although 
they disapproved of the resolution, might then join in it for the 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 55 

sake of unaninntj." Wheu the vote came to be taken on tlie 
2d of July, Pennsylvania reversed her adverse vote of the day 
before. That came ahout through two of the opposition 
delegates absenting themselves, leaving three in tavor of the 
resolution, to two against it. Rodney had arrived by express 
sent after him into Delaware, and liis presence enabled Dela- 
ware to cast her vote for the resolution. When South Carolina 
was called, she, according to the intimation given by Rutledge, 
reversed her vote, and thus made the vote unanimous with the 
exception of that of I^ew York, whose delegates still stood 
aloof — not voting, l)ecause they had no instructions, but de- 
claring that individually they were in favor of the resolution. 
On the 9th of July, the N^ew York Convention unanimously 
api^roved the resolution and the declaration. 

The official record of these proceedings is in the following 
words : — 

" Tuesday, July 2d, 1776. The Congress resumed the con- 
sideration of the resolution from the Committee of the Whole, 
which was agreed to, as follows : — 

" Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right 
ought to be, free and independent States ; that they are ab- 
solved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all 
political connection between them and the State of Great 
Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved." 

Fi-om the hour when that vote was taken, and that record 
made, the United States of America " assumed among the 
powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which 
the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them." It is 
the Centennial anniversary of that great event — the most 
momentous event in the political history of mankind — that 
you are commemorating by your pi-esence here to-day. 

And now, Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, indulge 
me while I say that the brief and somewhat dry narrative 
which you have complimented, by giving it your attention, is 



56 THENATIONAL 

made up from tlie meagre journals of the Colonial Congress, 
and from the facts, as I have found them scattered through the 
twenty volumes of the voluminous writings of Thomas Jeft'er- 
son and John Adams. With but two or three unimportant 
exceptions, I have used none but the writings that were con- 
temporaneous with the events described. And here I think I 
may do a puljlic service by correcting a very general error. I 
have seen it set down in the writings of men possessing some 
celebrity as authors, that Jefterson's narrative of the events of 
the second and fourth days of July, 1776, was written from 
memory when he was a very old man. This is a mischievous 
error. His narrative was published in Paris, in August, 1787, 
whilst he was Minister to France, and ^vhen he was but forty- 
three years of age. The error grew out of the hasty reading 
of a celebrated letter of Jefierson's to Samuel A. Wells, dated 
May 12, 1819; but in that very letter he declares, with solemn 
emphasis, that the narrative therein contained is extracted 
from his original notes, made in his place in Congress, "while 
the question of independence was under consideration before 
Congress," w' Inch notes, he adds, " I have now before me," and 
" for the truth of which I pledge myself to heaven and earth." 

He is a bold man who reads that testimony and then under- 
takes to say that Jefferson's narrative of what passed in Con- 
gress connected with Lee's Resolution and the Declaration of 
Independence was written from memory, when his memory 
was enfeebled by age. 

I am thus particular, Mr. Chairman, because the history of 
those grand and momentous events has been falsitied by many 
imaginative pictures — by fancy and by fiction — to a degree 
that has almost excluded the true history from the popular 
mind. Some of these fanciful fictions have been issued in 
book form in this city, within this Centennial year. 

I ask your pardon for this short departure from the imme- 
diate theme of the day, and will now conclude mj- share in 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 57 

the liroceedings. The great importance — the decisive and 
controlling character of the Resolution of Independence, 
adopted on the Second day of July, 1776, have been obscured 
to the popular vision i)\- the fame and splendor of Jefferson's 
injmortal Declaration of the reasons for the adojjtiou of that 
resolution. Yet Jefferson himself never allowed the one to 
overshadow in his estimation the importance of the other. 
The Declaration, in his mind, was intended to he "an appeal 
to the tribunal of the world" as a justification of what had 
already been done. It was intended, he says, " to be an ex- 
pression of the American mind, and to give that expression 
the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion," " to 
place before mankind the common sense of the subject in 
terms so plain and firm as to command their assent." Yet 
the Declaration of Iiidependence has dislodged the Resolution 
of Independence from the place of precedence in the popular 
mind, and the Fourth of July has displaced the Second as the 
nation's holiday, and the patriot's high festival ; and this is 
easy enough to understand when we consider the circum- 
stances. The Resolution was passed in private session, and 
remained unknown to the people generally until it and the 
Declaration were publicly proclaimed together. There was 
notliing in the phrasing of the Resolution to cause it to live 
in the popular memory — whilst there was everything in the 
Declaration to give it a vital hold upon the affections of the 
American people. It was so pre-eminently '■'■the expression of 
the American mind of that day," that people of every degree 
adopted it as their own. So it has i-emained. Its terse, forci- 
ble, and unanswerable arraignment of the Government of the 
mother country for tlie suppression of the rights and liberties 
of the American colonists — its clear and compact statement 
of the basis of all just government — "the consent of the 
governed" — and its grand exposition of the inherent and 



i)0 THENATIONAL 

inalienable rights of mankind — have made it an ever-living 
political gospel. 

" Independence Day" must, therefore, remain insejiarably 
connected with the Fourth of July — the day of the " Declara- 
tion," and not the day of the Resolution. Yet John Adams 
had reason for writing to his wife on the 3d day of Jul}, 1776, 
that "yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever 
was debated in America, and a greater, perhaps, never was 
nor will be decided among men. Tbat will live as truth 
among all Americans who know and value the history of their 
country." His prediction that that day would be celebrated 
by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival, 
"the most memorable epocha in tlie histor}^ of America," has 
failed in the precise fulfilment — but it is vicariously fulfilled 
by the universal celebration of the Fourth. But his prophetic 
vision was not entirely at fault ; and his prayer had not gone 
without answer. On the morning of the first of July, 1776, 
anticipating Indei^endence in that day's vote, he wrote from 
Pennsylvania to Archibald Bullock, " May Heaven prosj-jcr 
the new-born Republic, and make it more glorious than any 
former republics have been !" And on the third he wrote 
to Mrs. Adams, after the adoption of the Resolution of Inde- 
pendence, "Through all the gloom I can see the ra\-s of 
ravishing light and glory ;" and " posterity will triumph in 
this day's transactions." 

He, with Jefferson, lived until the 4th of July, 182G, and 
departing tliis life together on that day, had seen a full half 
century of the heaven-sent prosperity of the young Republic; 
and Adams witnessed the gathering of that light and glory 
whose advancing rays he had foreseen through the dark gloom 
of the Revolution. They were a joy to his patriotic e^-es ; but 
■what raptures would he have experienced if he could have had 
prc-vision of the coming glories of the ausjiicious days of this 
Centennial jom- — the pre-vision of a nation of forty-four mil- 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 59 

lions, extending from ocean to ocean across the Continent, and 
across twenty-three degrees of latitude, skilled in all arts, rival- 
ling the Old World in the raising and making of all articles 
of need, abounding in rich resources, the wilderness of the 
west transformed into an inexhaustible granary for the neces- 
sities of other countries, and standing the acknowledged equal, 
in all respects, with the foremost political powers of the earth — 
the pre-vision of the assembled nations here in this hundredth 
year of American Independence — all of them, the oldest and 
the youngest — the most populous and most powerful, with the 
humblest and feeblest ; the empire and the municipality ; the 
liberal monarchy and the limited republic ; the democracy 
and the autocracy ; the Christian, Mohammedan, and Pagan ; 
Europe, Asia, Africa, America, the islands of the Sea, and 
antipodal Australia ; which, in 1776, was an unknown quan- 
tity on the map of the world — all the nations assembled in the 
magnificent industrial palaces erected by the people of the 
American Republic ; assembled with their multitudinous use- 
ful products and rich treasures, in peaceful emulation, to pro- 
mote the progress and pi'osperity of mankind in the interests 
of universal peace ; assembled in commemoration of the hun- 
dredth year of American Independence, with their choice men 
of learning and science, and art and skill, to manifest the 
goodwill and high estimation they hold towards the great 
nation, the deep foundations of which he and his compatriots 
laid a hundred years ago — if some new apocalypse could have 
disclosed all this to his yearning eyes, what an enrapturing 
revelation would that have been ! 

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : I do not often give 
rein to exalted speech after that fashion, but exalting influ- 
ences are in the air all about us in these days. We do well 
to note and to celebrate the memorable epochs and the momen- 
tous events that have called us here to-day, and to keep freshly 
before us the example of the great and good and wise men, 



60 THENATIONAL 

without Avliose wisdom, and virtue, and patriotism, no such 
days or events would have a place in our history. This is a 
good service, hut we can do a hotter. We can, if we will, 
keep their example hefore us, and try to follow in their foot- 
steps every day in the year, and eveiy year of our lives. We 
can endeavor to practise their puhlic virtue, and hring our 
best political ability, and our highest standard of character, to 
the support and administration of tlie Constitution and the 
government which they founded, in order to form a more per- 
fect Union, to establish justice, to insure domestic tranquillity, 
to promote the general welfare, and to secure the blessings of 
liberty for themselves and their posterity. 

"God save America" was then played by the Ijand, after 
which Mr. Wallace came forward and said: — 

The name of Saltonstall is one of the early honored names 
of Massachusetts; and its honor has been kept in perennial 
freshness by a succession of descendants who have added new 
titles of respect to those long ago acquired by the ancient 
Governor who bore it. It comes, indeed, to this very day 
and hour with distinction in the person of one whom I intro- 
duce to you, the Hon. Leverett Saltonstall, of ^lassachusetts. 

REMARKS OP MR. SALTONSTALL. 

As I stand hei'e and look at that glorious old hall and call 
to mind the fact that it was here where, one hundred years 
ago, transpired that great, one might say, that greatest of all 
events of history — -the passage. of the resolution introduced 
by Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, and seconded b^- John 
Adams, " that these United Colonies are and of right ought 
to be//-fe and independent States ; that they are absolved from 
all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political con- 
nection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 61 

of .right ought to be, totally dissolved" — wlien I think of the 
men who were here assembled — the Adamses, Gerry, Paine, 
Hancock, Hopkins, Sherman, Wolcott, Livingston, Morris, 
Rush, Franklin, Carroll, Lee, Jefferson, Rutledge, Middleton, 
and otliers wliose names are dear to every American heart — a 
body of men of Avhom Lord Chatham declared " that in all 
his reading and observation — and he had read Thueydides and 
liad studied and admired the master States of the \\orld — that 
for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of 
conclusion, under such a complication of circumstances, no 
nation or body of men can stand in preference to the gene- 
ral Congress at Philadelphia;" — and when I think that that 
resolution not only made of those feeble colonies a great 
republic, but has brought life and hope to all the civilized 
world, I feel greatly honored in being asked to speak in this 
presence for the ancient Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and 
no less embarrassed to find words to express my thoughts 
upon this glorious theme, l^or should I have had this honor 
had it not been that that eminent patriot and scholar, the 
Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, of Boston, whose ancestor crossed 
the ocean in the same ship with my own, two hundred and 
forty-six years ago, was prevented from being here to-daj'. 
And Massachusetts, surely all will agree, is the last State 
which should be absent on this great day, from this most 
imposing occasion. It may well bo said that the Declaration 
of Independence was the glorious fruit of that tree whose 
germ was nurtured in the cabin of the May-Flower, one 
hundred and fifty-six years before. 

During that whole century and a half there was seldom a 
period when a conflict did not exist between the colonists and 
the crown ; and, thanks to God, there were always to be found 
in Massachusetts stalwart supporters of the rights and liber- 
ties of the people. They never swerved nor flinched, but 
were true sires of the men who were to act their part in the 



62 THENATIONAL 

greater struggle; so that when the time came which sum- 
moned the colonists to meet their oppressors in arms, the ter- 
rible necessity came to a peojile who had undoubtedly foreseen 
the dire event. 

To no man does the title of " Pioneer of the Revolution" 
more truly belong than to Samuel Adams. " The last of the 
Puritans," as he has been styled, he certainly united in his 
character all the best traits of his Puritan ancestry. From 
the day he left college, when he took for the theme of his 
disquisition " Whether it be lawful to resist the supreme 
magistrate, if the commonwealth cannot otherwise be pre- 
served," to the day of his death, this brave, far-seeing man 
walked majesticallj' on, caring never for himself, but only for 
the liberties of his country. Gov. Hutchinson said of him, 
" such is the obstinacy' and inflexible disposition of the man, 
he never can be conciliated by any otRce or gift whatever." 
" His feet were ever in the stirrups, his lance was ever in its 
rest," saj'S Jefferson. 

It is related of him that, on the morning of the battle of 
Lexington, as he was retreating before the British troops, he 
remarked to a friend, " This is a fine day ; I mean, a gloi-ious 
day for America." The man who first saw that the great 
question must result in an appeal to arms — the man who first 
tried to prepare his fellow-citizens to meet the great issue — 
Massachusetts does well at this hour to send his marble statue 
to the capital of the nation, which owes its existence in a 
great degree to the sagacity, the firmness, and the courage of 
this, her noble son. 

Nor can I forbear to speak, also, of his great kinsman and 
coadjutor, John Adams — their names ai-e so intimately asso- 
ciated in a common glory that to speak in praise of the one is 
to eulogize the other — the man whom Jefi:erson styled the 
^'■Colossus of that Congress;" whom Richard Stockton declared 
to be the '■'■ Atlas of Independence ;" who, possessing the great 



CENTENNIAL CO MJI EM ORATION. 63 

gift of impassioned eloquence, knew how to keep silent when, 
in ignorance of the true condition of affairs in Massachusetts, 
other colonies were not prepai'ed for the question of independ- 
ence; but always ready to speak when occasion required, so 
thoroughly acquainted was he with everj' question which 
came before Congress, and so admirably trained were his facul- 
ties in debate, possessing "a power of thought and expression 
which," according to Jefferson, "moved the members from 
their seats." The devoted husband of an admirable wife, the 
fond father, loving his home, but placing before all things else 
his country, devoting his life to her cause, he was spared to 
see his prophetic vision fulfilled when, on tlie 2d of July, one 
hundred years ago, he exclaimed: "yet through all the gloom 
I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that 
the end is worth more than all the means, and that posterity 
will triumph in this day's transactions, even although we 
should rue it, which I trust in God we shall not." 

How touching is it to think of the devotion of these men, 
the two Adamses, leaving their native State, her ports closed, 
the doors of her courts barred, her industries dead, her people 
in a state of starvation, her capital occupied by the army of 
the enemy; parting from loving wives and children without 
auy cheering assurance of meeting them again ; turning their 
horses' heads for Philadelphia, here to meet the leading spirits 
of sister colonies, of whose names they may have heard, but 
of whose views, wishes, and purposes, they had but a most 
imperfect knowledge. So far at least as any positive aggres- 
sions of the mother country were concerned, Massachusetts 
perhaps, stood alone; but her delegates, of whatever else they 
may have doubted, were sure of the ready sympatliy and the 
hearty good-will of those patriotic men whom the same call 
had summoned to this ancient revolutionary city. 

It took more than a fortnight in those days to travel from 
Boston to Philadelphia. The journey lay through a scarcely 



64 THENATIONAL 

settled countiy, occujiied, witli tlie exception of a few towns, 
distant from each other, by simple yeomen, who must have 
gazed with wonder, if not suspicion, upon the strangers, com- 
ing from so remote a jjlace as Boston. And now the trip can 
be made between the sunrise and sunset of a summer da}', 
traversir.g a country beautifully cultivated, through great 
cities, huge factories of every kind greeting the eye of the 
traveller, and the hum of varied industry tilling his ear. 
Great steamships lie at anchor in tlie harbors, and the yellow 
harvest falls before the march of the reaping machine. The 
electric wires, thanks to Boston's son but Philadelphia's pa- 
triot sage, are transmitting intelligence c^nicker than the 
lightning's flash from one side of the continent to the other, 
and even under the ocean to continents beyond. 

Truly said Joljn Adams, " the day will be celebrated by 
succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It 
ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by 
solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be 
solemnized with pomp and jiarade, with shows, games, sports, 
guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this 
continent to the other, from this time forward, forevei'more." 

But let me not close without saying, what I can as a sou of 
Massachusetts say from my heart, that as one hundred years 
ago Pennsylvania received the delegates from the other Colo- 
nies, and though at the outset not herself prepared to join 
Massachusetts and Virginia in their extreme measures, yet 
yielded them her cordial sympathy, and exposed herself, as 
the gathering-place of the Rebel Congress, to the severe retal- 
iatory measures of Great Britain, becoming in the end, as she 
has since continued to he, one of the most generous and de- 
voted of the sisterhood of States ; so now has Pennsylvania, 
and especially this good city of Philadelphia, almost alone 
and under every form of discouragement, carried out this 
magnificent project of a great centennial celebration ; and all 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 65 

the nations of the earth have heen invited and have come 
hither, bringing with them their superb treasures of art and 
industry, to take part with us in the national celebration of 
our natal day. Not alone the nations of Europe and South 
America, but from the far East — China with her four hundred 
millions of people ; the Islands of Japan, so recently opened 
to the world by peaceful influences, under our own brave 
Perry ; Egypt, with her forty centuries of history coming to 
exchange greetings with this young nation ; but most touch- 
ing of all, Great Britain, from whose loins we sprung, with, 
her colonies, man^^ of which, one hundred years ago, were 
unknown to civilized man, laying aside old prejudices, has 
brought hither and displa^'ed to the world the rich products 
of her looms, lier worksiiops, and ateliers with a lavishness 
that calls for our warmest admiration, and seems to bid us 
take notice that she too has been busy these last hundred 
years. 

I say, then, that I'enns^'lvania has well earned her title of 
Keystone to this mighty arch of the Union by her record of 
the past, and not less by her boldness and perseverance in con- 
ceiving and carrying out the plan of this great International 
Exhibition. 

May our people profit, as they ought, by this great educator 
— may they come from the very extremities of the Hepublic, 
and meet here to rejoice together with grateful hearts, and to 
revive in each other's breasts tlie memories of ancestral vir- 
tues, so that in the next century we may show the nations of 
the world the best results of Republican institutions, as in 
the last we have held up to them the beacon-light of freedom. 

A new Centennial ode, entitled " The Voice of the Old 
Bell," was then sung. Tlie music is by Mr. W. Bradshaw, 
and the words by Miss Julia S. Thompson. The solo parts 
were sung by the well-known basso, Mr. George A. Conly. 

9 



66 THENATIONAL 

The piece was encored, and Mr. Conlj sang his part again. 
At its conclusion Mr. Wallace rose and said: — 

You will now hear from the State of Ehode Island ; hut 
before you so liear, may I not apostrophize her in the lau- 
guageof one of her own bards, writing in times when lawless 
violence sought to subvert her old and honored government — 

■■ Oh gallant land of bosoms true, 
(^till bear that stainless shield : 
That ANCHOR clung the tempest through, 
That HOPE untaught to yield." 

The name of Lippitt comes to us with honor from the war 
of the Revolution. Col. Christopher Lippitt fought at "White 
Plains, at Trenton, and at I'rinceton, and in all fought with 
bravery and skill. His grandson, the present wise and re- 
spected Governor of Ehode Island, will now speak to you. I 
introduce the Hon. Henry Lippitt, of Rhode Island. 

REMARKS OP (GOVERNOR LIPPITT. 

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

Finding myself on the list of speakers for to-day, the only 
Governor of a State who will address j'ou, I feel that it is pro- 
per to sa}' something of the revolutionary career of the little 
State I have tlie honor to represent. Rhode Island is so small, 
that her sons must speak when opportunity is ofiered them, 
or she may be forgotten. 

The distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts who has 
just preceded me, has carried us back to Plymouth Rock, and 
referred, in glowing terms, to the sentiments of the compact 
on the Mayilower. I trust, sir, that I may therefore be 
allowed to call your attention to that glorious aimouncement 
made two hundred and forty years ago by our great founder, 
Roger Williams, when he proclaimed to all the world that he 
had established a State on the then unheard-of principle, that 



CENTENNIAI, COMMEMORATION. 67 

" Here is an asylum where every one has the right to worship 
God according to the dictates of his own conscience."' Tiiis 
great principle antedates and underlies all political liberty; it 
is now recognized as the foundation of all our State Constitu- 
tions, and without its practical application, we coidd enjoy no 
real political freedom. 

I claim, sir, for my little State, that her sons shed the first 
blood of the Revolution. On the night of the 9th of June, 
1772, four years before the Declaration of Independence, about 
forty stalwart men gathered together in the streets of Provi- 
dence, organized themselves, went down Xarragansett Bay, 
attacked His Britannic Majesty's Sloop of War " Gaspee," 
wounded the commander, captured the vessel, and destroyed 
her before morning. This daring and successful act was un- 
dertaken by these men, with the full knowledge that, if they 
escaped the bullets of the enemy in front, they were liable to 
be hung for their disloyalty ; but such was the universal sen- 
timent of the community in their favor, that no evidence could 
be found to convict them. Our State was the tirst to move 
officially in favor of the creation of an American navy, and 
furnished the first American admiral, in the person of Esek 
Hopkins, who was regularly apjwinted by Congress to that 
high office. In June, 1775, one year before the Declaration, 
the Legislature of Rhode Island fitted out two armed vessels, 
and placed them under the command of Al)raham Whipple, 
with the title of Commodore. Whijjple was one of the origi- 
nators and leaders of the Gaspee expedition, and a man of 
great energy a)id determined bravery. On his wa}' to sea he 
fired the first regular broadside into the British fleet, lying off 
the harbor of Il^ewport, that ^\'as discharged by an American 
naval vessel against the English navy. 

There is one exploit of this man, which is so characteristic, 
that I trust I may be pardoned for mentioning it here. Dur- 
ing one of his voyages, he encountered the homeward bound 



68 THENATIONAl. 

Jamaica fleet, consisting of nearly 150 sail, and convoyed by 
several ships of war. He concealed bis guns, boisted Britisb 
colors, and joined the fleet, sailing in tbeir company several 
daj'S. After nigbtfall each day be cautiously captured one of 
tbe vessels, manned ber from bis own crew, and despatcbed 
ber bomeward, so as to be out of sigbt before morning. In 
tbis way be captured ten ricbly laden vessels, eigbt of wbicb 
arrived safely in American ports. A gallant exploit, wortby 
of emulation by our brave tars of tbe present day. 

But, Mr. Chairman, I will not further weary you with these 
details ; before closing, I wish to thank tbe men of Pennsyl- 
vania, of Philadelphia, for what they have done for tbis great 
Centennial Exhibition. It is in consequence of your liberality 
and untiring efforts that the Exhibition has been held. Those 
who live outside of your State feel tbis immense debt of grati- 
tude more than you ajipreciate. All honor, then, to tbe State 
of Pennsylvania, to tbe city of Philadelphia, for their glorious 
work, crowned with success. 

My own State has done what she could to promote the suc- 
cess of the Exhibition. She has sent you many specimens of 
the product of ber industry; but, above all, she has produced 
that monster engine whicli forms such a conspicuous object in 
tbe centi'e of Machinery Hall, where it stands as a monument 
of its own magnificent proportions. With tbe power of more 
than an army witli banners, it takes charge of the exhibit of 
tbe mechanical industry- of the country, and sets tbe myriad 
wheels in motion contained in a space of more than fifteen 
acres. 

In behalf of the citizens of Rhode Island, I wish to thank 
the authorities and citizens of Philadelphia for what you have 
done towards tbe restoration of Independence Hall. This edi- 
fice belongs not to you alone, but to tbe citizens of our whole 
country. I charge you to take care of it ; let no Vandal bands, 
under tbe plea of improvement, alter or destroy its fair pro- 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 69 

portions. Let it be forever preserved as we find it to-day. 
Every year that we go away from this anniversary, it will 
become more and more sacred to our children; they will come 
up here from all jiartsof our common country, draw new inspi- 
rations of laatriotism from its walls, and bless God that we have 
such a country. 

A number of national airs were then played by the band, 
and were loudly cheered. 

Mr. Wallace then rose and said : — 

Among our highest pleasures to-day is the presence of the 
Hon. Frederick De Peyster, of New York, and President of 
the Historical Society of that State; a worthy representative 
of that early citizen of New Amsterdam, Johainies De Peyster, 
distinguished for his integrity in many oifices of trust under 
both Dutch and English Colonial rule, and with whose name 
you are acquainted. No worthier representative, no repre- 
sentative more welcome, could the Historical Society of New 
York send to us this day. I introduce to you with peculiar 
pleasure the Hon. Frederick De Peyster, of New York. 

REMARKS OF MR. DE PEYSTER. 

Fellow-Citizens : 

The event we are here assembled on this memorable spot to 
celebrate, is one that announces to the world the stability of 
the American Republic, tested by the century which to-mor- 
row ushers in its successors. Where, in the vast past, is its 
exemplar? Its bounds are the \%ast oceans which roll along its 
extensive coasts, and nations, easterly, senile in contrast, and, 
westerly, creeping into maturity, realms where all is to be 
found, save that enei-gy which has made our Republic what it 
is. Many of us who are now present, were a few minutes since 
in the very Hall adjacent, where the signers of the Declaration 



70 T II E N A T I N A L 

of Independence made their names immortal, liavc come into 
this open area, where the vei-y sun sliining over us seems hy 
liis servant-rays to glow in sympathy with the enkindled 
flame of patriotic ardor which animates every loyal sonl here 
and throughout this great and glorious republic. 

You to-day have here already heard eloquent words in refe- 
rence to the memorable individuals who imrticipated in the 
" times that tried men's souls" — of the patriots who first demon- 
strated those vital, pregnant verities, now made deathless. 

It was a memoi'able saying of a Lord Chancellor of England 
that, from the father were derived, chiefly', the moral quali- 
ties, but froni the mother, the intellectual. Whether or not 
this saying is true or incorrect, it is not now m^- intention to 
investigate. It is here introduced, because this reflection is 
suggestive of a subject-matter whicli deserves especial conside- 
ration on an occasion so interesting as the jDresent, when the 
influences which shaped, and the minds which originated, the 
vital measures previously mentioned, deserve especial regard. 

The glorious document, the asgis of our national character, 
contained, as has been said, "glittering generalities." It need- 
ed, alas, the blood of patriotic men to weld the substance thus 
misrepi'esented, into adamantine solidity, perishable onl}' with 
the national faith, that cannot die. And have the men of 
America- alone wrought out these existing results? Look 
back upon the past, and hear the deathless notes which pro- 
claim the mother's intellectual training of her offspring; 
likewise, the daughter, recalling the mother's virtuous teach- 
ing, when assuming, in her turn, the duties of a wife and 
mother, aid in f)erpetuating this influence, and assist in giving 
vigor to manly thought, and its teachings. >^hall not the 
mother and the wife of the "Father of his Country" receive 
this day a tribute worthy of the influence which made the son 
and husband, "First in the hearts of his countrymen"? 

The susceptible nature of the growing child, gradually influ- 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 71 

enced by the tender, watcliful, and judicious training of the 
mother, is as the plastic clay under the skilful touch of the 
master sculptor, taking, almost imperceptibly, its loveliest 
shajie. The watchful care of the loving mother ever exerted 
to guard and keep her "jewels;" her pure and gentle counsels, 
and her tender admonitions, act on her offspring as the sculp- 
tor's touch upon the marble, and eventually insures an ample 
reward. The famed Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, fur- 
nishes us an illustration familiar to every student. Where, in 
tlic annals of the old or of the new world, shall a mother be 
found who can proudly, and bej'ond comparison, say of her son 
as Mary, the mother of Washington, might with truth have 
said of her unparalleled son, "Here is my jewel, without com- 
pare," the brightest "jewel" recorded in history. 

Let us now review the circumstances which were instru- 
mental in placing Washington in a position, resulting from 
the Declaration of Independence, and which eventually led to 
its consummation. 

In America, the tirst attempt to secure the benefits arising 
from harmony of thought and action, which in a national body 
of earnest men is so apt to follow thorough discussion, was 
made by William Penn, whose abilit\' and wisdom led him to 
perceive that some concert of action sliould be adopted for the 
settlement of difficulties and disputes between the provinces, 
and in order that their integrity as well as the safety of their 
inhabitants might be rendered more secure. To this end he 
proposed, as early as 1697, to the Board of Trade a " Plan for 
a Union of the Colonies in America." 

The attempt of France to shut out, so to speak, the English 
settlements in North America from tlie vast opportunities for 
gain arising from free intercourse with the interior of the 
country, and the attempt of this nation to secure the aid of 
the Indian tribes in a contest — the result of which could not 
for a moment be a matter of doubt, were it not that such ad- 



72 THENATIONAL 

ventitious aid was invoked or employed — led to a proposal for 
a Congress (similar to that ■uliich Penn had suggested) which 
was originally devised by a former Lieutenant-Governor of 
Pennsylvania, Sir William Keith. This gentleman, in 1739, 
recommended to the ministry of Great Britain a method for 
the formation of a union of the Colonies in America, the j^lan 
proposed being that delegates from their representative bodies 
should nnite and form a sort of general provincial government. 
It does not appear that either of these proposals served any 
other purpose than that of drawing the attention of the people 
to the subject. 

The first actual American Congress had its origin in a re- 
commendation from the British government, that a call be 
issued for a convention of delegates from the several Colonies, 
and naming Albany as a proper place of meeting. This call 
was issued in 1754, and was due to the British ministry taking 
alarm at the possible action of the Indian tribes, in the event 
of France continuing her threatening proceedings, which, 
though not as yet actually hostile, seemed on the eve of be- 
coming so. The ascendency which the French had acquired 
over the Indian race in America grew in proportion as they 
became moi'c intimate, and with such allies as the savage war- 
riors, the French settlers hoiked to conquer their rivals, and 
secure possession of the entire country. 

This first Congress met at Alban}-, the call having been ad- 
dressed to the Governor of New York, and the plan of union 
ofiered by Benjamin Franklin, a delegate from Pennsylvania, 
was received by his colleagues, with a high degree of favor, 
and finally acceitted. Notwithstanding this almost unani- 
mous approval by the delegates in convention, it was rejected 
by the Colonies, and came to nought. It was the persistence 
with which the inhabitants of each colony refused to imperil 
its individual independence, by any concession of rights to 
a general government, that defeated this project. While 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 73 

such a union as was projjosed would have materially as well 
as morally strengthened the individual colouies, and enabled 
them the better to overcome the immediate dangers of the 
local situation, it would also have enabled them to. assert 
their rights in the face of aggressive action on the part of 
the home government; and, indeed, the British ministry could 
not but regard the plan proposed by Franklin — which did not 
dift'er essentially from that previously brought forward by 
Penn — as other than inimical to their distant jurisdiction. 

It may not be out of place to examine more fully the pro- 
ceedings of this first American Congress, held over one 
hundred and twenty-two years ago. As has been stated, the 
call issued by the British Secretary of State was addressed, 
by order of the King, to the Governor of New York. In 
response to this call, there assembled at Albany, on the 
19th of June, 1754, the memorable Congress of Commis- 
sioners representing every colony north of tlie Potomac ex- 
cept New Jersey, including Massachusetts, New Hampshire, 
Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, with 
Virginia represented in the person of the distinguished Lieu- 
tenant-Governor De Lancey, of New York, who was the pre- 
siding officer. This Congress had for its chief objects the 
consideration of means of defence, and of entering into some 
treaty with the powerful Six Nations and their allied tribes. 
On the 24th of June a motion was made, and passed in the 
affirmative, that the commissioners deliver their opinion whe- 
ther a union of all the Colonies is not at present absolutely 
necessary for their security and defence, and a committee Avas 
accordingly a|3pointed to devise a plan. On the 28th of June 
this committee presented short hints of a scheme for the 
union. After considerable debate, the question was put on the 
2d of July, whether the Board should proceed to form the plan 
of a Union of the Colonies, to be established by an act of Par- 
liament, and was passed in the affirmative. Debate on this 
10 



74 TIIENATIONAL 

question, and on Indian affairs, engaged the attention of the 
Board until tlie 9th of July, when a plan for a union was 
agreed upon, and Mr. Franklin was desired to make a draft of 
it, as then concluded upon. On the 10th, after thorough con- 
sideration, it was resolved that the commissioners from the 
several governments be desired to lay the plan before their 
respective constituents for their consideration, and that the 
Secretary of this Board transmit a copy thereof to the Gover- 
nor of each of the Colonies which have not sent their commis- 
sioners to this Congress. On the 11th of July, of tlie same year, 
the Congress adjourned. 

After seven years of suffering, the struggle known in his- 
tory as the "French War," terminated. Canada had been 
wrested from the French, and the Colonies had covered them- 
selves with glory. The Home government was, however, ap- 
parently dissatisfied, its desire seeming to be that the colonists 
should be compelled to pay the cost of this struggle. Indeed, 
the most arbitrary steps were taken and insisted upon, and 
this, too, despite the remonstrances and appeals which poured 
in from every province. I am aware that the so-called 
" invention" of the Revolutionary committees of correspond- 
ence has been claimed for Samuel Adams, of Massachusetts ; 
but it is, nevertheless, a matter of record which cannot be 
disputed, that the Assembly of New York, as early as 1764, 
six years before the Massachusetts " invention," and nearly 
nine years before the movement in Virginia, appointed a com- 
mittee of correspondence with the Assemblies, or conmiittees 
of Assemblies throughout the Continent, with the direct and 
avowed purpose to avert, if possible, the " impending dangers 
which threatened the Colonies, of being taxed by laws to be 
passed in Great Britain ;" and less than a 3'ear afterward 
sounded the keynote of the Revolution — Independence — in 
the publications attributed to John Morin Scott. The 
honored historian of America gives this fact its proper place 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 75 

in liis summary statement : " Virginia marshalled resistance ; 
Massacluisetts entreated union ; ]S"ew York pointed to inde- 
pendence." At last a Congress was called by the Committee 
of the ISTew York Assembly, and met in New York in 1765 ; 
it was called the Stamp Act Congress, and gave utterance in a 
bold and decided manner to the grievances under which the 
colonists labored, and made an earnest declaration of rights. 
The resistance which was being ofter^d to the enforced pay- 
ment of a stamp duty on goods brought into the Colonies now 
assumed definite and permanent shape ; but the announcement 
came from New York that she would give in her adherence to 
no course of action other than that inaugurated by a General 
Congress. 

Massachusetts finally took the same view of the matter, 
and in September, 1774, there met in this city, what was 
known as the first Continental Congress. As yet, except 
among a few of the most dissatisfied of the colonists, there 
was no desire for separation from the mother country. The 
most visionary would hardly dare even hope for a successful 
independent existence. After more than a month of earnest 
consideration the Congress dissolved on the 26th of October, 
1774. The gist of their proceedings was. First, an assertion 
of the equal rights of the colonists with other members of 
the British empire ; and, Second, the passing of declarations 
and resolves against the importation of merchandise from 
abi'oad, which were to be rigidly and em2:)hatically regarded. 
Finally, the proceeding culminated in a petition to the 
King, which was unsuccessful. Before adjourning, provi- 
sion was made for a second Congress, to meet about a year 
later in the same place. When we consider the consequences 
resulting from this act of foresight we must regard this pro- 
vision as an almost providential one, and the wisdom of the 
measure is certainly deserving of the most unqualified praise. 
An opportunity was allowed for a consideration, in England, 



7G THE NATIONAL 

of the petition sent to tlie King, should this direct appeal to 
the crown fail to secure relief; then more strenuous efforts 
would become necessary; and what time so favorable for their 
inauguration as when smarting under injustice and insult?— 
the very hopelessness of the situation would serve as a com- 
mon bond among the Colonies. Prudent, faithful, and respect- 
ful, with a full comprehension of all that was required by the 
occasion, there must have dawned upon even the staunchest 
adherents to the crown in that body the conviction that a 
struggle was imminent. To the dissenting there must have 
come a kind of secret delight that the eve of separation, the 
dawn of a new, untrammelled existence, was so rapidly ap- 
proaching, and that speedily the wrath of an oppressed people 
would find vent. Despite this, however, the colonists were 
full of loyalty, and proud of their connection and descent, 
and the hope was pretty generally indulged that through the 
efforts of the great T\Tiig party in England some relief or 
redress would be obtained, and tranriuillity again restored. 

Subsequent events showed how futile was any hope based 
on aught save the most abject submission to whatever mea- 
sures, however unjust, the home government cliose to impose. 
This ignoble alternative was, fortunately for humanity, re- 
fused, and fittingly so, by men worthy of their lineage. In 
1775 all hope of a peaceable adjustment of difference had 
ceased. There did not, however, now take place an immediate 
and universal uprising of an intelligent and injured jieople, 
but a slow revulsion of feeling began to take possession of 
men's hearts and steadily spread throughout the land, and this 
feeling became so deeply intense that years of the blackest 
misery and privation did not suffice to extinguish it. 

A glance at the situation will show that the condition of 
the colonists at this period was most deplorable. Surrounded, 
so to speak, liy tribes of savages, who were so much better 
managed by the government than at the present day that 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 77 

their allegiance to the crown could be relied on to count pow- 
erfully against the colonists should they rebel; with local 
assemblies no longer in accord with the people; with the 
daily opposition coming from the recipients of royal favor and 
patronage, and the dangerous hesitation — fortunately of late 
years almost extinct — with which the wealthy thi-ow their 
influence into the scale, all combining to increase the gravity 
of the situation, resulted in a state of aftairs sufficient to appal 
even the stoutest heart. 

Ere the second Continental Congress had assembled, the 
miinite-men of Lexington had set the country ablaze with 
patriotic fervor. The news of the battle of the 19th of April 
reached New York about the 23d, and electrified, as it could 
not well fail to do, the entire people. What now were wealth 
and comfort, even life itself, when their sacrifice was called for 
by the stern demands of right and duty? In the midst of this 
exciting state of affairs the second Continental Congress con- 
vened. ISTo longer in doubt as to the course to pursue, the 
people everywhere urged their representatives to break the 
yoke that held them in slavery to the mother country. The 
most decided approval was given to such a course by the peo- 
ple of New York, and the provincial Congress of that State 
was petitioned to " instruct their delegates in Continental Con- 
gress to use their utmost endeavors in that august assembly to 
cause these United Colonies to become independent of Great 
Britain." 

This immortal second Continental Congress was, we see, 
thoroughly in consonance with the popular feeling. Unlike 
similar bodies in subsequent times, the individuals com- 
posing this Congress sought not their own aggrandizement, 
nor material benefit. Full to overflowing with the sacred- 
ness of their trust ; glowing with patriotic ardor, yet deeply 
conscious of the gravity of their actions and the dire conse- 
quences they were probably to entail upon themselves and 



78 THENATIONAL 

Upon those whom they held most dear; thoroughly satis- 
fied tliat they gave expression to the will of the whole 
people, they made that declaration of rights and principles, 
and littered that resolve to be free which, running on through 
a round century, has ever been to the down-trodden and op- 
pressed a burst of light as if from the very foot of the Throne 
of the Most High. To the fulfilment of these resolves they 
pledged "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor." 

We have followed American Congresses from the beginning 
of the necessity for their existence down to the very acmd of 
their usefulness, attained in the instance we have just consid- 
ered. Enshrined forever in the highest place in the estimation 
of freedom-loving mankind, let us leave the consideration of 
the most august and patriotic assembly of modern times, per- 
haps without a parallel since the assembling of the apostles 
around the ^Master, in its effects upon the Avelfare and eleva- 
tion of the human race, and seek, by the emulation of its 
deeds of heroic patriotism, to reinaugurate that noble self- 
denial, that earnest integrity of purpose, that consideration 
and love for our fellow-man, which, reacting through ages, 
may finally fit mankind for a higher state of beatitude. 

Having thus considered the origin and cause of the great 
results, which through the past century have flowed, with 
but here and there an interruption of brief duration and for- 
tunately overcome, steadily along the stream of time down to 
the present day, with its glorious realization and astonishing 
possibilities, justice to a most imjjortant element in the con- 
summation of these results demands a consideration of the 
influence exerted hy woman, who, in all times and in every 
country, has been largely instrumental in the shaping of events. 
It is both instructive and interesting to trace the influence 
of the sex, in the earliest ages known to us, when, on an occa- 
sion like the present, a great public event was to be commemo- 
rated. 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 79 

Among tlie ancient Hebrews, the office of announcing and 
celebrating good news, or glad tidings, on the occasion of any 
great public event, belonged, as learned men, familiar with 
their records declare, peculiarly to the ivonvm. j^ot in 
ancient times alone has the influence of woman been felt in 
the afiairs of nations. The history of all ages testifies to the 
prominent part taken by her in the shaping of events. Sure- 
ly, from no more beautiful source than from the teachings 
of the tender mother, and the encouragement of the loving 
wife, could come the love of God and country ; from no purer 
fountain on earth could flow the teachings which inculcate 
those noble virtues and heroic qualities which assist so might- 
ily in the elevation of mankind. !N"ot merely the teachings 
of woman, but her love and example have ever inspired to 
the loftiest deeds, and the most magnificent achievements. 
Gentle, but earnest, her counsels have always been powerful 
in their antagonism to oppression, cruelty, and wrong. In 
patriotic fervor, oftentimes excelling the male sex, temjjered 
as were the latter by actual experience, it would seem that 
their very physical helplessness lent greater weight to the 
suggestions of their active intellects, and proud, but loving- 
hearts. What greater incentive to valiant conduct, after a 
knowledge of the demands of his country, can be conceived, 
than the Spartan soldier received from his mother, wlien, 
leaving her side for the field t)f battle, he received from her, 
with his shield, the parting injunction to return "with it, or 
on it." 

Is it possible that any one will challenge the claim tlius 
made, and which concedes the powerful influence of woman? 
Scarcely ! for has not every soldier had one, if not both of 
these blessings — a beloved mother, or a beloved wife? Who 
does not know their power as pleaders, when enlisted by sym- 
pathy with a good cause? 

" Like rainbows ou tlie cloud of war, 
The .harbingers of victory." 



80 THENATIONAL 

As I have referred to these portents of the sky, let me dose 
the thought tlms suggested with tlic adjuration of ^neas, 
wlicn he was ahout to wage a war wliich lie deemed just. 

" Ye springs, ye floods, ye vai-ious powers that lie 
Beucatli tlie ileep. or tread the golden sky, 
Hear and attest." 

The Centennial Ode, written hy S. C. Upham, music bj- 
Adam Geibel, was then sung hj the chorus, after which Mr. 
Wallace came to the stand and said : — 

Our hope was that the distinguished and eloquent Mr. 
Lamar, of Mississippi, would be with us to-day, but a tele- 
gram just received from him states that he has been taken ill, 
and obliged to leave the cars at Wilmington, on his journey 
hitherward. I present to you in his stead the Hon. Francis 
Putnam Stevens, of Maryland, who, in his office of Chair- 
man of the Centennial Committee of Maryland, has done so 
mucli to attach our citizens to him, and to bring to this 
venerable spot from that State which I have named, so many 
sons of those honorable fathers who bore a great part in what 
was done here a centur^^ ago. 

REMARKS OF MR. STEVENS. 

I have been accorded an honor of which I am deeply sen- 
sible. I had not the most remote idea of addressing: this 
vast assemblage until this moment. I had come to deposit 
my brief memoir of John Henry, Jr., of Maryland, in the old 
Chamber of Liberty, and to be but a silent participant in the 
exercises of the day. 

I cannot expect to fill the place of the distinguished gen- 
tleman from Mississippi, who has been unavoidably prevented 
from being j^resent. Eut upon an occasion like this, with the 
grand memories of the past, made glorious by the acts of our 
forefathers just one hundred years ago, in youdcr building; 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 81 

with the great gathering of the people to inaugurate the fes- 
tivities of the Irrational birthday, I cannot be silent ; the very 
stones would crj- out if America's sons, on this great day, 
should refuse to speak. 

Your President and Committee have bestowed a high com- 
pliment upon the State of which I am an humble representa- 
tive. Maryland greets you all to-day. Truh', Pennsylvania is 
the keystone, but we, of Maryland, one of the original thirteen, 
are an integral part of the great arch, equally as important to 
the strength and solidity of the whole. 

The Governor of Rhode Island has referred to the sentiments 
of Roger "Williams, and spoken in eulogy of his State. Roger 
Williams, William Penn, and Lord Baltimore went hand in 
hand in the same great cause. Massachusetts has spoken 
through her distinguished representative to-day, and we honor 
the old Bay State for her noble part in the struggle for inde- 
pendence, but, Ml". President, a proud record remains for 
Maryland. 

The Ark and the Dove upon the peaceful shores of St. Mary's, 
landed our Pilgrim fathers ; the standard which Constantine 
sa\v in the heavens was planted upon the soil of Maryland, and 
the ensign of civil and religious liberty was there unfurled first 
among the Colonies. Maryland bore an honorable part in the 
effort that made these Colonies a free and independent people; 
and upon the very day you here commemorate, her represen- 
tatives, in Congress assembled, cast a unanimous vote in favor 
of Richard Henry Lee's resolution, " that these Colonies are, 
and of right ought to be, free and ijidcpendent States." Maryland, 
through her representative, Thomas Johnson, Jr., nominated 
in those halls George Washington to be Commander-in-Chief 
of " the armies raised and to be raised," and to-day her monu- 
mental city points with just pride to the noble shaft she alone 
has reared to his memory. She sent hei'e such representatives as 
Samuel Chase, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, John Henry, Jr., 
11 



82 THENATIONAL 

Thomas Johnson, Jr., Thomas Stone, and William Paca. She 
boasts "The old Maryland line," with Howard, Williams, Gist, 
Smallwood, and others ; she gave j'on the first telegraphic wire, 
the first canal, and the first steam passenger railway. It was 
Maryland that gave to yon, and to the woi-ld, your national 
anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner." There the Continental 
Congress met ; there Washington resigned his commission. 

But why enumerate the glories of Maryland ? This is a na- 
tional occasion. We are here on this great anniversary from 
the E"orth and South as brethren. I need not refer to the 
deeds of Maryland, but I would say of her as Webster said of 
Massachusetts : " She needs no eulogium ; there she stands ; 
look at her." 

I rejoice that we meet, not as citizens of any State, but as 
citizens of this greatest of Republics. There was a time when 
it was said, " to be a Roman citizen, was greater than to be a 
king." The time will come when it shall be greater than to 
have been a Romnn, to be a citizen of these United States. 

We all rejoice on this glad day together, fi'ora the North, 
the South, the East, and the West, in this land'of liberty, that 
the precepts of our fathers have made and preserved us a 
nation, and God grant that, when the two hundredth anniver- 
sary of America's freedom shall dawn, it shall find us all a 
happy and united people. 

The Centennial hymn by Fennimore was then sung by the 
chorus. At its conclusion Mr. Wallace rose and said: — 

You have heard from Massachusetts, from Rhode Island, 
from N^ew York, and from Maryland. You shall now hear 
from the State which welcomes you all this day. To citizens 
of Pennsylvania I need not introduce the speaker. We all 
know him. We all admire his talents and his accomplishments 
of many kinds. To the citizens of other States and of foreign 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 83 

couuti'ies I beg to introduce the Hon. Benjamin Harris Brews- 
ter, lately tlie Attorney-General of Pennsylvania. 

REMARKS OF MR. BREWSTER. 

The remarks I shall make must of necessity be confined to 
a sim2:)le subject, and a few reflections. "We do not meet to 
argue or discuss. We do not meet to enforce opinions, and 
solicit public action in support of doctrines, but we meet to 
testily our sense of gratitude for the public liberties we possess, 
and the social and domestic comfoi-ts we enjoy, the fruit of 
the courage and wisdom of our forefathers. 

Citizens from other States are here who have united with us 
in these great ceremonies ; others are here who will succeed 
me, and I must be cautious, in this my home, not to occupy 
that time which hospitality requires I should leave open to 
them. 

When I have recalled the incidents of our history from the 
earliest days of colonial existence to the blessed hour when it 
was solemnly declared that we were, " and of right ought to 
bo, free and independent States," I have observed that, in all 
of the great events where public oi-der, private right, or public 
duty was the subject of popular action, tliey proceeded with 
deliberation, and with a rigid regard to the strict forms of 
legislative order, and of public legal enactment. There was no 
mere insurrectionary spirit in the men from whom we inherit 
the liberties and the government we now possess. Our ances- 
tors were no insurgents. No element of the conspirator, out- 
law, or communist was a part of their natures. They were 
serious, God-fearing, God-loving men, and from the beginning 
had solemn work to do, and they knew it, and witliin the 
strictest forms of legal order they asserted their natural and 
legal rights. They had known the harsh usage of adversity ; 
they had felt its discipline. Many of them possessed that 



84 THENATIONAL 

knowledge which is the fruit of study, learning, and experi- 
ence, and they all bowed with submission before the obligations 
of religion, and acknowledged the supremacy of public will. 

The first act done by the Pilgrims of the Mayflower, and 
just before they landed, was the organization of tlieir form of 
government. 

Let me read to you this remarkable paper, tliat you may hear 
and know how cautious, how formal, and how earnest wei'e 
those men. " In the name of God ! Amen : we, whose names are 
underwritten, tlie ]oyii\ subjects of our dread sovereign. King 
James, having undertaken for the glorj- of God, and the ad- 
vancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our King and 
country, a voyage, to pilant the first colony in the northern 
parts of Virginia, do by these jaresents, solemnly and mutually, 
in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and com- 
bine ourselves together into a civil bod}' jjolitie, for our better 
ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends afore- 
said, and by virtue liei-eof to enact, constitute, and frame such 
just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and oflices, 
from time to time, as shall be thought most convenient for the 
general good of the Colony, unto whicli we promise all due 
submission and obedience." 

On the 11th of November, 1620, in the cabin of the May- 
flower, before they had placed their feet on this Continent, did 
these true men — forty-one in number — for themselves and their 
families, one hundred in all, thus formally bind themselves to 
obey the law. They had fled from oppression ; oppression 
inflicted in the name of the law. Sixty-three days had they 
been tossed upon the bosom of that rough sea, and in the dark 
JS^ovember days were they about to make their homes on a 
bleak and barren coast. A pitiless winter was before them, a 
rascing ocean behind them, and a wilderness for their dwelling- 
place. They gave no thought to physical discomforts, but with 
deliberation did thev thus sit down and first consider their 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 85 

public and social duties, and thus bind themselves to obey the 
law, for they knew that from order and obedience only could 
individual happiness and social prosperity come. They had 
suffered by the abuse of the law : but they reverenced obedience 
to that law, which is the product of public will. 

Thus was it with all the Colonies in all their actions; in 
their domestic contentions, as well as in their disputes with 
the mother country, were the constituted forms of legal enact- 
ment, legal obedience, and legal resistance adhered to. 

I have no recollection of such public records in the history 
of any other people. It is peculiar to us. It is a part of the 
glory of our career, that the pen has ever been mightier than 
the sword. While we have perpetuated in our annals the 
formal declarations of our principles and our acts, so have we 
likewise in the same way embalmed in our history the living 
words recorded at the time, which were to protect us, and 
teach mankind through us the doctrines we had maintained 
and the liberties we have secured. 

With us the sword was only drawn to justify the written 
word, that uttered the convictions of the very souls of our 
great ancestors. 

This thought I shall not further follow by reciting each 
incident of public action, for the time will not permit me so 
to do. The incidents illustrating the fact are too numerous 
to repeat. When in the fulness of time our grievances had 
ripened into wrongs, and the attempt to enforce the royal will 
had degenerated into acts of oppression, then too, step by step 
as we approached the great crisis of our separation did the 
people at various times and in different places publish and 
declare, in formal and apt words as were thereafter published 
and declared here, by the Continental Congress, that we were 
free, and of right ought to be free and independent States. 

Whatever those men had to do they did publich- — formally 
— lawfully. Before the outbi-eak of the war, they remon- 



86 THE NATIONAL 

strated in resolutions reciting public grievances. Tliey sent 
Commissioners to London to assert our rights and resist ag- 
gression. When the collision was inevitable, like an assem- 
blage of ambassadors the delegates from the Colonies came 
together to consider the remedies the}- demanded and resist 
the wrongs they complained of. And by these men was first 
enacted the resolution that absolved us from our allegiance. 
And then after that was published the act of separation — that 
document known and called the Declaration of Independence — 
a document that contains more daring and self-demonstrating 
propositions in favor of human rights than were ever before 
pronounced to mankind by philosoi^hers or statesmen. 

Our mission was one of liberty, law, and public order — the 
rational liberty of freemen restrained by a sense of duty and 
obedience to law — and that rule have we lived by to this day. 

The law has been the only compensation to mankind for 
political tyraunj- in the darkest houi's the world ever knew. 
It must be supreme — for then God is sujii-eme. " For, lie who 
entrusts man with supreme power gives it to a wild beast — 
for such his appetites sometimes make him. Passion, too, 
influences those Avho are in power — even the very best of men 
— for which reason the law is intellect free from appetite." 

Again recurring to the thought I started with, let me speak 
to 3'ou, and through you to the millions of our people whose 
hearts are with us this day, and whose souls exult at the 
moral and intellectual grandeur of our history, and at the 
inevitable splendor of our great future. Let me congratulate 
you that we came of such a lineage of heroic men — ^the states- 
men of the human race — who loved God, as lie is the father 
of natural liberty — the liberty of obedience to law and sub- 
ordination to natural and social duty. Let me congratulate 
you that a hundred years of such national life has brought us 
to tills point of national glory, the peaceful glory of a pros- 
perous people of forty niilli-ons who sprang from the few who 



CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION. 87 

sought refuge here, and here erected a temple of human rights 
into which all men who love law and ohey order can enter 
and find happiness and peace. 

It would seem as if Milton, who had battled for the rights 
of those exiles who were our forefathers, had predicted the 
creation and growth of this people. Listen to him, and hear 
the words of that old, blind republican, who spake as man 
never before spake, and who was himself one of the greatest 
apostles of human rights. Listen to him : — 

" Methinks I see in my own mind a noble and puissant na- 
tion, rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking 
his invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle renewing 
her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the 
full mid-day beams, purging and unsealing her long-abused 
sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance." 

As he predicted, so do we now live and act, and may it last 
thus forever! 

Mr. Wallace now rose again, and turning to the gentlemen 
who composed the Congress of Authors, thanked them in the 
name of Col. Etting and of the City Authorities of Philadel- 
phia, in the name of the Committee on the National Centen- 
nial Commemoration, and of the Historical Society of Penn- 
sylvania, " and," said he, " I think I may venture to say, in 
the name of the august Genius of History itself," for the most 
valuable contribution which, in resjwnse to Col. Etting's invi- 
tation, they had made to the historical riches of the Ee- 
public. 

At the conclusion of these remarks, Mr. Conly sang, with 
the highest eflect, the Star Spangled Banner, the chorus to 
which was sung not less impressively by the Musical Associa- 
tion. Mr. Conly, being encored, repeated the last verse. 

When the sound of this beautiful solo, and of the applauses 



88 THENATIONAL 

wliicli it brouglit forth, had died away, ^Ir. Wallace came 
forward and said : — 

South Carolina meant to be with us this day in the person 
of the Rev. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney,D.D., of Charleston. 
Of what family he is, and what is the honor of that name, 
which, in its whole length, he bears, I need tell no American 
whatever. No more patriotic family than that of the Pinck- 
neys ever belonged to our country, and it never had any more 
brave, disinterested, unaffected, and honorable member than 
the gallant General whose name is now borne by his name- 
sake, a soldier of the Cross. You all know how, in 1798, in 
our threatened war of that day with France, when a question 
of military precedence rose between General Knox and other 
generals, General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney sought — 
thougli Washington wished him. high in command — to prefer 
others in honor to himself. " Put me anywhere," he said, 
"where I can serve the country." The same disinterested 
spirit exhibited itself in 1812, when a pure and patriotic politi- 
cal party desired to make him their candidate for the Presi- 
dency of the United States; an honor which he declined, 
because he thought that another was more fit for it; "the 
man," as our own late honored citizen, Charles Chauncey, 
characterized him at a dinner given in compliment to him in 
1812 — "the man whose love of lionorwas greater than his love 
of power, and deeper tlian his love of self." I grieve to say 
that, owing to an accident to the steamer on which the Eev. 
Mr. Pinckney is, on his way here — and of which a telegram 
apprises us — the reverend gentleman can hardly arrive before 
this evening; later tluxn he expected to be with us. 

I will, therefore, ask the Eight Reverend William Bacon 
Stevens, D.D., LL.D, the Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church in the Diocese of Pennsylvania, and the official suc- 
cessor in the Episcopate of Pennsylvania, of the good and 
patriotic Bishop White, Chaplain both to the Continental 



C E N T E X N' I A I. C M M E M R A T I(J N , 



89 



Congress aud to tlie OoiigTess of tlie United Stntes, to dismiss 
us witli H ))enedietion. 

The Right Reverend gentleman then came npon tlie stand, 
and amidst a prot'oiiiid and reverent silence, dismissed, with 
the well-known a]iostolie wtn'ds, the vast assend:)lage. 



FINIS. 




12 



INTERESTING CORRESPONDENCE. 



INDEPENDENCE HALL AND THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



Pilll.ADF.LriUA, December 4tli, 1876. 

Frank M. Etting, Esq. 

Dear Sir: At the close of the great season which during the present year we have been 
celebrating, we, your fellow-citizens chiefly, desire to express to you the high sense which we have of 
your services in connection with the restoration of the Chamber of Independence, and the establishment 
of what is known as the National Museum, in the old Judicial Chamber opposite to it. 

With you, sir, as we suppose, originated the idea of both undertakings; and to your knowledge of 
the history of our ancient Province and of the men, both of it and the Revolutionary e|)och, as well as 
of the important years following that epoch — a knowledge which we regard as singularly extensive and 
accurate; to your conjectures, inquiries, and researches as to the now existing memorials of all; and 
finally, to your indefatigable personal efforts and labor in bringing together, putting in order, and 
arranging the whole multitude of portraits and objects of manifold interest after a knowledge of their 
existence had been obtained, the country has been indebted for what, in our opinion, has been one of 
the most interesting features of the great year whose celebration now draws to a close. 

Your conception of what historical truth, unity, and effects required, and the plan on which this 
conception has been carried out, both in the Chamber of Independence and in the old Judicial Chamber 
opposite to it, have excited our admiration and receive our approval. 

It is a source of pride to us, that the City authorities, during your long connection with them in 
this matter, acted, in the accomplishment of what was done — in both places — so largely upon your 
suggestions. We feel grateful to them for the aid which they gave to your endeavors, and we trust that 
the collections in both Chambers may remain, so far as they have been made, and be completed, if 
possible, with the purposes and upon the plans which were originally contemplated by yourself. 

We are, sir, with much esteem. 

Your friends. 



John F. Hartranft 

John Welsh 

George Bancroft, Washington 

Charles Francis Adams, Mass. 

Hugh Blair Grigsby, Va. 

George Henry Preble, U. S. Navy 

Caleb Cope 

Adolph E. Borie 

John William Wallace 

Joseph Swift 

William A. Whitehead, N. J. 

George W. Biddle 

James L. Claghorn 

Thomas Robins 

Stephen A. Caldwell 

Richard S. Smith 

John McAllister, Jr. 

Henry C. Carey 

Thomas Balch 



Wm. Bacon Stevens 

Henry A. Boardman 

Robert C. Winthrop, Mass. 

Henry W. Longfellow, Mass. 

Wiliam Wirt Henry, Va. 

George W. Cullum, U. S. .-\rmy 

James J. Barclay 

Arthur G. Coffin 

Eli K. Price 

Charles Willing 

Benson J. Tossing, N. Y. 

David S. Brown 

Thomas Smith 

Edwin M. Lewis 

J. Livingston Erringer 

Daniel Smith, Jr. 

Peter McCall 

Alfred L. Elwyn 

William Duane 



Richard H. Dana, Jr., Mass. 
Richard Frothingham, Mass. 
John G. Wliittier, Mass- 
Thomas F. Davies 
Edward A. Foggo 
William G. Crowell 
Joseph Patterson 
Charles Ingersoll 
Craig Biddle 
Benjamin H. Brewster 
Frederic Collins 
R. Alonzo Brock, Va. 
John R. Bartlett, R. I. 
Henr_v Flanders 
Alexander Biddle 
William Dravton 
Charles Henry Hart 
T. Hewson Bache 
Robert H. Hare 
Francis Pntnani Stevens, Mtt. 
Moncnre Robinson 
John T. Lewis 
Richard Vaiix 
Wni. M. Tilghman 
John H. Packard 
Edmund Quincy, Mass-. 
Alexis Caswell, R. I. 
Henry Wheatland, Mass. 
William P. Ui)ham, Mass. 
John L. Mercer, Va. 
Fairman Rogers 
Aubrey H. Smith 
Richard D. Wood 
Lloyd P. Smith 
John H. Watt 
J. Duval Rodney 
J. Parker Norris 
Edward S. Morse, Mass. 
Francis S. Hoffman 
F. Carroll Brewster 
Thomas Earp 
James N. Stone 
Charles H. Muirheid 
William B. Rogers, Jr. 
Samuel C. Perkins 
D. B. Hagen, Mass. 
George DeB. Keim 
Josejih B. Townsend 
John S. Gerhard 



Leverett Saltonstall, Mass. 

Emory Washburn, Mass. 

William White Bronsoii 

Henry J. Morton 

E. R. Beadle 

John B. Gest 

John Jordan. Jr. 

Isaac Hazlehurst 

Henry Wharton 

Daniel Doughert\- 

H. P. McKean 

Alex. R. Boteler, Va. ' 

Charles Deane, Mass. 

.\sa L Fish 

John Cadwalader, Jr. 

Charles Chauncey 

Frederick D. Stone 

James H. Hutchinson 

John Jay Smith 

Brantz Mayer, Mil. 

Benjamin Rush 

Roger Sherman 

William White 

William Wister 

EUerslie Wallace 

George E. Ellis, Mass. 

William Gammell, R. I. 

Abner C. Goodell, Jr., Mass. 

George M. Whi[)j)le, Mass. 

Pennock Pusey, Minn. 

Samuel Hart 

John Wiegand 

William S. Vaux 

Samuel E. Stokes 

Henry Reed 

George S. Pe|>per 

Austin J. Montgomery 

Samuel A. Green, Mass. 

R. Coulton Davis 

Cadwala<ler Biddle 

Samuel Chew 

George C. Morris 

Richard A. Gilpin 

Joseph J. Mickley 

William P. Tathani 

T. F. Hunt, Mass. 

Samuel Bell 

Solomon Shepard 

Wm. Rotch Wi.ster 



Henry Rawle 

George W. Hunter 

William G. Brooks, Ma^s. 

Frank Furness 

Joseph P. Brinton 

Francis A. Lewis 

Charles H. Hutchinson 

VVm. Lvttleton Savage 

» ■ . 
Henry C. Gibson 

George Sergeant 

Richard M. Cadwalader 

William S. Baker 

Horace Howard Furness 

Henry Armitt Brown 

L. C. Cleeman 

John C. Browne 

William Hacker 

John A. McAllister 

Oliver Evans 

Edward S. Dixon 

Nath. E. Janey 

John T. Spencer 

George Willing 

William P. Blake, Conn. 

J. Somers Smith 

Samuel Agnew 

Thomas C. Amory, Mass. 

John Sullivan, Mass. 

Wm. E. Du Bois 

Jas. Pollock 

Craig D. Ritchie 

Maurice H. Matsinger 

William R. Newbold 

Thomas Wriggins 

Jas. I,. Harmar 

Edward Sullivan, Mass. 

J. Morris Meredith, Mass. 

John Neill 

J. Stewart 

A. P.. Edge 

George Thomson 

Charles S. Patton 

Thomas S. Ellis 

Howell Evans 

Wm. L. Mactier 

John W. Dulles 

James G. Craighead 

Otis Norcross, Mass. 

F. W, Lincoln, Mass. 



John Blair Linn 

J. Edward Carpenter 

Henry M. Brooks, Mass. 

Elihu Chauncey 

Henry C. Townsend 

George Gilpin 

George H. Kirkham 

James E. Caldwell 

J. Sergeant Price 

Charles M. Morris 

John W. Huff 

Henrv C. Baird 

Ferdinand J. Dreer 

Joseph A. Clay 

Fred. Sylvester 

Ephm. Clark 

John O. James 

Kmlen Hutchinson 

("has. Richardson 

Joseph H. Collins 

Joseph P. Richardson 

John W. Sexton 

Charles S. Keyser 

George H. Corliss, R. L 

Jacob Reigel 

George P. Smith 

J. Wingate Thornton, Mass. 

G. S. B. Sullivan, Mass. 

Jas. C. Bootli 

William Purves 

Edwin A. Pue 

N. A. Jennings 

B. L. Keen 

Wm. E. Hitchcock 
Rich. C. Winshi]) 
John L. Sullivan, Mass. 
James S. Amory, Mass. 
D. Hayes Agnew 
W. Howard Wriggins 
John F. Keen 
John Sailer 
George T. Bodine 
Chas. D. Norton 

C. D. Little 
G. R. Bonfield 
Wm. E. Schenck 
S. D. Powel 

H. W. Pickering, Mass. 
Alanson Bigelow, Mass. 



Levi Knowles 
F. H. Butler 
William Chapin 
Joseph K. Wheeler 
H. N. Thissell 
Wm. W. Wallace 
Henry D. Sullivan, Mass. 
Stephen G. Deblois, Mass. 
Robert Patterson 
George Philler 
George H. Stuart 
James Bonbright 
Horace Binney 



John W. Black 

James R. Earle 

James T. Shinn 

Morris Patterson 

M. B. Grier 

Thomas G. Hood 

T. R. Sullivan, Mass. 

Thos. J. F. Temple, Mass. 

J. H. Shortridge 

Morton McMichael, Jr. 

W. L. Schafifer 

Samuel C. Huey 

W. H. N. Stewart 



1315 .Si'RccE Street, 

Pliila., Dec. 71I1, 



1S76. 



To Hon. John F. Hartranft. Rt. Rev. Wim. Bacon Stevens, Rev. Henry A. Boardman, John 
WEfSH, Esq., the Hon. Geo. BANCROFr, Robt. C. Winthrop, Charles Francis Adams, Prof. 
Henry W. Longfellow, and others. 

GentleiMEN : I am to day in receipt of your communication of December 4, 1S76. Coming to 
me, as it does, at a time when the labor of many years seems threatened with annihilation, I cordially 
welcome the expressions it contains. Such endorsement from the highest authority in the land, among 
the Statesmen, the Theologians, the Jurists, the Historians, and the Poets, evidences that deep-seated 
love of our country's glory without which Sam. Adams, and Washington, and Morris, and Franklin 
had lived and struggled in vain. 

Upon the very threshold of our centennial epoch, we point with just pride to the commercial and 
mechanical results, in the competition with all nations, at the E.\position just closed ; but, if our 
Republic is to be progressively successful — nay, if it is to endure during another hundred years, the 
principles of state and the personal virtues of the Founders of the Nation must be kept always in view. 
'I'hese are the functions of a National Museum; such the inevitable effect of the reverential preservation 
of buildings and personal memorials of those whom we would hold up for imitation — whose " footprints" 
should no/ he obliterated from "the sands of time." 

Earnestly do I join in the hope expressed by you that the collections which (with some of your 
own number) I have been enabled to bring together at Independence Hall "may remain to be com- 
pleted with the purposes and upon the plans originally contemplated." 

My official report to the city authorities, June 7th, 1873 (^' ''is close of the first year), pointed to 
the necessity of placing the venerable pile and its contents in the hands of Trustees for the people of 
the United States. The jierfection of the plan, nay, even the conservation of the work already done, 
seems to call for the appointment of some permanent body — possibly and preferably a national com- 
mission. Such absolute dedication by the citizens of Philadelphia to their fellow countrymen would be 
the most graceful and enduring centennial monument. To such end, gentlemen, permit me to liope 
your continued interest may lead. 

I beg you, gentlemen, to accept the assurances of my sincere regard and esteem, and am faithfully 
yours, 

P'RANK M. ETTING. 



ipifi;tl^ 



